


Lost in Translation

by Aythli



Series: Gears [1]
Category: Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle
Genre: F/M, Gender Role Reversal, Inspired by Art, M/M, Magic, Steampunk, or tossing gender roles out the window
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-02-26
Updated: 2015-08-28
Packaged: 2018-04-17 15:07:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 25,705
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4671218
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aythli/pseuds/Aythli
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In a world where everything runs on geothermal steam and technology has evolved accordingly, the group find themselves forced to live up to Mokona's declaration of being a 'family.' Unfortunately, Fai and Kurogane still haven't reconciled where they stand emotionally. Can the assumption that they're married be the kick in the ass they need to move forward?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Arrival

**Author's Note:**

> Brought on by [this lovely piece](http://konnichipuu.deviantart.com/art/Steampunk-Love-197569056) by the incomparable [konnichipuu](http://konnichipuu.deviantart.com/).

As the after-images of the previous world faded away, Fai swiveled to take stock of their new location. It was night here, but definitely winter given the chill damp that hung in the air. They'd landed below a brass, y-shaped street lamp decorated in thick scrollwork and covered in a fine patina of rust. Faint light filtered through the clouded globes.

Tall, slender brick houses rose on either side of them. Fai had seen this type of architecture in several previous worlds, but this one lacked the general overlay of soot the others had. Even so, every exposed bit of metal was slightly rusted.

An elegant statue in the middle of the square caught Fai's attention, and he crossed to it. Tubes of metal of varying height rose from the ground. The shortest barely reached his waist, while the tallest was almost twice his height. A deep humming issued from the tallest, and Fai peered into the shorter one.

"Ah, careful!"

A hand wrapped his elbow and yanked him back several steps. He could hear the others sprinting to reach him and the new arrival.

"The air coming out of that can melt the skin off your face." She explained. "Could make for a bit of a bad day." A slow tune began to play from the statue, each new note accompanied by a metallic churning beneath the base.

"That's amazing!" Syaoran leaned between Fai and the newcomer. "How does it work?"

She launched into an elaborate description involving drilled gears that turned to allow air to pass through the pipes in a specific order to create the tune.

"Oh, you've done it now. Get her started and she'll never stop." The words were good-natured and earned a long-suffering, over the shoulder eye roll from the woman though her words barely faltered. He shoved a gloved hand in Kurogane's direction. "How do you do? I'm Mika, and that's Sari, since she probably hasn't introduced herself."

"Kurogane." He shook Mika's hand

Mika leaned forward on the handlebars of the bike he was astride. The thing was elegant, clearly a powerful machine given the massive piston between the wheels, but also etched and inlayed in intricate designs. Parts were covered by hammered metal, while other mechanics were left open to the environment, all without making the machine look unfinished.

Fai stepped away from the sculpture, intent on meeting Mika  they needed to find lodging and food, and Sari was clearly too focused on her explanation to be a good source of critical information.

"You look a little lost."

The voice wasn't entirely friendly, but Fai couldn't quite put his finger on what exactly bothered him about the tone. He turned, cloak flaring with the quick movement and smiling mask descending with practiced ease. "Just new to town."

"I certainly haven't seen you before." The man was non-descript - a little taller than Fai with short brown hair. The bike propped up beside him looked as generic as its rider and was certainly nothing compared to Mika's.

Had he not spoken, Fai likely would have continued right on past. "We arrived about fifteen minutes ago, and Sari and Mika have." Fingers brushed his bangs back out of his face before dropping down to cup his chin and tilt his head upwards, effectively cutting off the sentence. Fai knocked the man's hand away with a gentle sweep of his arm. The hold on his face was not all that strong. "Can I help you?"

The man responded by grabbing his chin in a tighter grip.

Fai's smile faltered a little. Over the course of their journey, Kurogane had slowly and methodically chipped away at his armor. The result: Fai no longer even bothered to hide his emotions around Kurogane as he usually received a swift kick in the ass if he tried, but he also found it harder to maintain the fake visage when it counted. If the man didn't remove his hand from Fai's person in the next ten seconds, Fai was going to remove it for him, and in two more seconds, his intentions would be plainly displayed on his face.

A forceful blow landed on the man's elbow, tearing his hand from Fai before he could move. Kurogane used the momentum of the strike to throw the majority of his bulk between Fai and the other man.

"What?" The man sneered at Kurogane. "He's not marked, so he's fair game."

"Fuck off, Orin!" Suddenly Sari was between all three of them and shoving him away. "Do you have to hit on everything that moves? Here's a better idea  fix up that junk-heap of a bike, and maybe then you won't have to strong arm someone into filling your bed."

"Mind your place." He was stronger than he looked. With a single hand on Sari's shoulder, he sent her staggering.

Fai and Kurogane caught an arm each, supporting her as she regained her balance.

"Don't touch my wife." Mika loomed over the much-shorter Orin, who shrank back a couple of steps before retreating the rest of the way to his bike. "Was there something else?" He queried when Orin continued to glare.

With an irritated huff, Orin kicked the bike to life and sped into the darkness.

"Oh, my word, I am so sorry about that." Sari stepped out of their grasp, dusted her wide-sleeved blouse off and adjusted the leather tool belt hanging at an angle across her hips. "Some of our men are impossible. You're from a very long ways away, aren't you?"

"Very far away." Fai agreed.

"You're all traveling together?"

"We're a family!" Mokona chimed in for the first time since they'd landed. "Kurogane's the daddy, Fai's the mommy, Syaoran's the kid."

Sari caught it on pure instinct when it leapt towards her. "And you are?"

"Mokona is Mokona."

"Fascinating!" She hooked a finger under one of Mokona's paws and stretched it out, examining its belly, feet, and massive ears. "I've never seen an automaton this small. How on earth do you fit the engine in there? What does it run on? How?"

"Honey." Mika broke through her stream of questions. "Perhaps now is not the time."

She let go of Mokona's feet and gently deposited it back in Syaoran's hands. "Right. Sorry." Sari looked pensively at Fai. "So, you're the wife?"

Something in the way she said the words sounded strange. Fai had encountered it before. Mokona's ability to translate worked exceptionally well ninety percent of the time, but every once in a while, it seemed to be searching for the right word to capture the nuances of meaning in the original. This was one of those times. The people in Celes had close to twenty words to describe snow, and fifty if you included descriptors of ice, hail and freezing rain. He suspected that all of his words for snow would translate to one or two words in either Syaoran or Kurogane's language, since they simply did not have the need for that level of discrimination.

"Yes." He agreed more for Kurogane's reaction than anything else. He was not disappointed.

A glower started to creep across Kurogane's face, but Mika spoke before he had a chance to voice his frustration.

"You'd all better come with us. We've got enough room. And besides." He turned his attention to Fai. "We have to do something about you."

Fai pointed an innocent finger at his face.

* * *

The house was jam-packed with bits of gears, metal and machinery. Sari threw her shoulder against the door to shove back a stack of boxes blocking it and managed to wedge it open just far enough to let them pass. "Come on in. Sorry it's a bit of a mess."

Only about half of the width of the hallway was clear floor, so Fai stepped carefully. Even with the extra attention, his cloak still snagged on the corner of a chest, sending the precariously stacked papers on top of it flying. He knelt to gather them.

"I can take those."

He started to place them in Sari's outstretched hands and stopped. _These drawings are_ Complete with marked off dimensions, the drawings diagramed out articulated joints for fingers, knees, elbows and even a couple of full limb replacements. The engineering behind it was different, but they bore a striking resemblance to the mechanical arm from Piffle. "These are beautiful."

"Thank you." A look of pride that could only belong to a creator crossed Sari's face. "I've only actually made about half of these." She studied the pictures as she spoke. Her brows drew down, and she dug through her pocket and scrawled a notation on one before setting them aside. "I can take your coats."

As Syaoran and Kurogane shrugged out of their capes, Mika slid past them. "And if you two will follow me, I can show you to your rooms."

Kurogane didn't budge.

Mika laughed. "We're not going to hurt him. We just want to forestall another incident like what happened earlier. Trust me, Orin's on the tame side of single people around here."

"He said that Fai-san wasn't marked. What did he mean?" The anthropologist in Syaoran was showing through.

"You really are from a long way away, aren't you?" Sari was stroking their cloaks in interest, running her fingers over the strange fabric and stranger designs. Her hand left the fabric and rose to toy with the narrow cylinders of hair that hung from the ornamental barrette high on the back of her head. "When you're bonded to someone, your hair is twisted and combed, like this." She held up a dread to illustrate. "You mark yourself as belonging to someone else as a means to remind yourself that you are no longer living for yourself, but also to show everyone else that you areoff the market, for lack of a better description."

"But, your hair isn't" Syaoran looked over his shoulder at Mika and searched for the right word.

"Dreaded." Mika filled in. "No, only the wife's hair is dreaded."

There was that weird undertone again. Fai cocked his head to one side, trying to fill in the words that weren't translating properly.

"It's improper for a wife to seek out a husband, so there's no need." Sari elaborated

"So you're going todread his hair?" Kurogane spoke for the first time since they'd entered the house.

This had gone too far. Claiming to be the mom of the group was one thing, but doing something to display that he was Kurogane's lover  he mentally stumbled on the word, unwilling to use wife given his obvious gender-contradiction to that word  was something else entirely. Love was a terrifying thing. He hadn't quite realized what he had been wishing for in his prison all those long years ago, but he was smitten now, and whether or not Kurogane returned the feelings, he would follow him to the ends of the Earth.

And beyond.

After they left Sakura in Clow, Fai had expectedsomething. Anything. Kurogane had, after all, declined the option to return to Nihon. Deep down, he supposed he realized that he could be the initiator, but he had spent his entire life hating himself, and that was not easy to forget. How could Kurogane possibly love him? Sure, he had risked his life many time's over; he had even given body parts, but perhaps that was only a passing fancy. Perhaps

Fai shook himself. "I understand your concern, but we're travelers and just passing through. Couldn't we just?" He trailed off, shocked by the Kurogane's fleeting dark look.

"I wish." Sari was digging through one of the piles, finally extracting a box full of a myriad of beads. "With that color hair and those beautiful eyes, you're way to exotic to pass up, and like Mika said, Orin's on the tame end. The single ones out there are single for a reason, and they rarely take no for an answer."

"Do it." The growled words brooked no argument.

His emotional mask dropped down so easily that he almost forgot how long it had been since he'd last used that vapid smile to hide from Kurogane. "Aarara, are you worried about me, Kuroi?"

"Yes."

And was gone before it was even fully in place. In any typical conversation, Fai would resort to teasing, but he had never ribbed Kurogane about caring for him, too worried that the answers would be the truth and not something that he wanted to hear.

"This'll take a couple of hours." Sari explained, catching Fai's arm and tugging him through the clutter towards the back of the house. The hall opened into an enormous vaulted chamber. The amount of stuff was about the same, but the place seemed much more open simply because of the sheer size. She parked Fai in a chair underneath one of the hanging lights.

Mika bent to speak to Syaoran and Mokona. "I'm going to prepare dinner, if you wouldn't mind helping."

"Of course not!"

When Kurogane attempted to follow, Sari put a hand against his chest and held him in place. "Not you. I need your help."

"Probably a good idea. Kuro-tan doesn't cook all that well." Fai teased gently, glad for the opportunity to break the gravity of the previous conversation.

"Why, you!"

Sari grinned from one to the other. "You've been together a while, huh?" Neither answered, but that didn't seem to faze her. "Here." She dropped the box into Kurogane's hands and kicked a stool in his direction. "The beads should signify both you and him. Pick some out for me."

Fai tried to watch him, expecting him to simply snatch out the first few, but lost his line of sight when Sari shoved his head forward.

Practiced fingers pushed his long bangs over his face and then brushed the remaining hair straight back. She picked out a square of hair and began combing it up towards his scalp. The process was slow, but oddly relaxing. She worked from the front of his hair to the back, combing everything save his bangs into tight dreads.

"Alright. That's done it!" She planted her hands on her hips and surveyed her handiwork.

Fai raised a tentative hand to his hair, which was much shorter than he could ever remember it being.

"Oh, you can touch them, they're not going to fall out. There's a mirror on the wall over there, somewhere." She gestured. "But give me just a minute to do the last touches before you look. Got the beads?"

Kurogane handed her a small, shallow box that he'd sorted the beads into, and she threaded them carefully over Fai's dreads. She fished out an elastic bit of string and strung the remainder onto it before wrapping it around Fai's dreads to make a chunky ponytail. "Now you can go look." She said triumphantly.

Several more engineering drawings hung on the wall in front of the mirror, and Fai eased them out of the way. As he'd suspected, his hair was extremely short, but it didn't look half bad. The beads ran in a couple of rows through his hair. He leaned closer to get a better look.

A mixture of red and ice blue winked back at him.

"I do like the colors you picked." Sari's voice carried easily across the room. "Your eye colors are probably the best identifier you could go for. They're both unique here."

"Mm."

Perfect translator or not, Mokona's ability had never been able to interpret Kurogane's grunts. Mostly thanks to his time in Yasha's camp, Fai had become moderately fluent, but this one was not in his mental dictionary.

* * *

The food had arrived seconds after Sari finished with Fai's hair and had been simple, yet delicious. By the time they'd finished and cleaned, they were all yawning. Mika had pointed them in the right direction. Up the stairs  the first door on the left was for Syaoran and Mokona and the second for Kurogane and Fai.

There was only one small problem.

A very _small_ problem.

Fai eyed the narrow bed.

"I'm sleeping on the floor." Kurogane yanked the extra blanket from the foot of the bed. The motion made him wince.

"Don't be silly, Kuro-chi. Your arm's still bothering you."

"Don't you even think about sleeping on the floor, mage."

They stared at each other, daring the other to back off. Finally, Kurogane growled, "It's too late for this." He shed his shirt and crawled into the bed, lying on his side on the far edge with his back to the middle.

Fai slowly joined him, taking up a similar position on his respective half. In all of their travels, they'd only shared a bed a handful of times and only at the very beginning of their journey, when Fai's desire to annoy Kurogane had outweighed any thoughts of future complications. Ever since Tokyo, Fai had meticulously found somewhere else to sleep.

The heat radiating from Kurogane's back filled the oh-so-small space separating them and gradually lulled him to sleep.

He woke wrapped in Kurogane's arms with his forehead nestled against the wide chest and cheek resting on the rough metal of the mechanical arm. He raised his head carefully, surprised the Kurogane was sleeping on his bad side and curious as to whether the position was bothering him.

Creases from a scowl of faint pain marred his face, and Fai raised a hand to smooth them. Perhaps he would help them reach Piffle on the next jump. Tomoyo may have been brilliant, but the arm had never really fit correctly, and it hurt to see Kurogane in pain.

 _Damn love. If I'd known._ He smiled and gently pushed Kurogane on to his back, easing the pressure on his arm; the bed was so small that he had to glue himself to Kurogane's side not to fall off, but he didn't particularly mind. _I would have wished for the exact same thing._


	2. Arrival

Sounds of pots and dishes clinking against one another drifted up the stairwell and through the open door and slowly, but inexorably, dragged Fai awake. He raised his head to peer out the window. Given the faint glow in the eastern sky, the sun was just beginning to rise, but it wasn't visible because of the gray clouds packed together across the sky.  
  
He slowly disentangled himself from Kurogane, who had mercifully remained on his back for the rest of the night. Fai was glad to see that the pain had drained from his expression and that he seemed to resting more comfortably.  
  
A set of clothes sat on the low chair by the door. Though the top set was clearly men's clothes, they were far too small to fit Mika. Fai held up the shirt. It would be a little loose  - no surprises there. He vaguely wondered where it had come from.  
  
After the multitude of worlds they'd been subjected to, they had all become pros at deciphering the application of assorted clothing articles. The shirt, pants and vest were easy. The two wide bands of brown fabric, however, stumped him, and he tucked them into his pocket. The pants were a little long, and he'd left his boots downstairs, following suit when Sari and Mika had shed their footwear upon entering the house, so he rolled the cuffs up and padded barefoot down the narrow, steep staircase.  
  
Dinner had been served in the large workroom the previous night, so Fai followed his nose and ears to the kitchen, unsure of the way. Low counters ran around the three full walls and were only broken by a sink and stove. A tall island took up the majority of floor space in the middle of the room. The top was covered in engineering drawings similar to the ones he had spilled last night, as well as a loaf of bread, plate with sliced cheese, some spreads of unknown origin and a stack of plates, silverware and mugs.  
  
Sari perched on one of the tall stools, sketching furiously on one of the diagrams and chewing on her lower lip as she worked. The kettle on the stove behind her started whistling, and she sat back, surveyed her work, gave a slight nod of satisfaction, and slid off the stool to retrieve the boiling water.  
  
"Morning!" She spotted him in the doorway when she moved and smiled brightly. "Come on in, get some food." Her gaze dropped down his frame and back up. "Good lord, those clothes are loose on you, aren't they?" She jabbed a finger at the food. "Eat!"  
  
Despite common misconceptions, Fai wasn't skinny for lack of eating; it was just that nothing ever stuck to his body. Ashura had speculated that most of it was converted to power for his magic, but he hadn't gained weight after loosing his magic. In retrospect, his appetite had dropped noticeably when he became a vampire, so maybe it had all balanced out. Now that part of his magic was restored - his stomach chose to interrupt that thought with a low rumble – he was starving most of the time.  
  
"Would you like some tea?" Sari asked over her shoulder.  
  
"Yes, thank you." The bread smelled delicious up close, and he cut a hefty slice and spread a dollop of fruity-looking jam over it. The diagrams under his elbows drew his attention. He shifted his weight off them and pushed the top two apart so that he could see the entirety of the sketch. A hand reached into the line of his vision and set a mug on the corner of the paper.  
  
"I didn't get much sleep last night." Sari admitted sheepishly, shoving her pencil into the base of her ponytail and cradling the mug of tea between her hands. "Your automaton is spectacular. I'm hoping I can look at him today, but I had some ideas for how to shrink down the engine to fit into something that small."  
  
"Automaton?" Fai remembered her using the word last night, but hadn't had a chance to get a clarification.  
  
"Mmhmm, a mechanical creature. But I've never seen one so complex! I can't even imagine how you program it to speak, let alone the complicated movements."  
  
"Mokona's not mechanical!" The protest interrupted them from the doorway. Mokona made a flying leap from Syaoran's shoulder to the edge of the island.  
  
"Well, then, what are you?" Sari leaned close to it.  
  
"Mokona is Mokona!"  
  
Fai smiled at her exasperated look. "Believe it or not, Mokona is as alive as you, or me or Syaoran-kun. There's nothing mechanical inside it."  
  
"You're serious?" When he nodded, she shook her head and held out her hands to Mokona.  
  
Mokona stuffed a slice of cheese into its mouth and hopped into her palms.  
  
"It's like magic." She marveled. "Amazing." She poked and prodded at Mokona a little, grinning when it giggled and squirmed. "Oh look, it's snowing!" Sari pointed to the window behind their heads, and they turned as one to see the fat snowflakes begin to drift by.  
  
"How do you keep this place warm?" Syaoran asked the question that had been on the tip of Fai's tongue. The house didn't have any visible source of heat. Given the architecture, Fai would have expected a wood or coal stove to be hulking in the corner somewhere, but hadn't seen one.  
  
"Oh, that's thanks to the geothermal spring." She pointed over her shoulder in a vaguely northeast direction. "We have hot water coming out of the ground at the base of the valley over there. It's so hot that it should come out as steam, but we pump it up under pressure to keep it liquid, release the pressure so that it flashes to steam at the surface and use the steam to turn a set of turbines. That's where our power comes from. We then pump the steam around the village to heat the houses and our water. And it exhausts…"  
  
"At the statue." Fai murmured, remembering her comment. "After all of that, it's hot enough to burn?"  
  
She shook her head, "Usually not, and certainly not in the winter. During the summer, though, everyone typically has their vents closed in their houses, and the exhaust is a lot hotter. It's just a good policy to always assume it will hurt you, as opposed to taking that chance."  
  
Syaoran leaned forward, breakfast clearly forgotten, and engaged Sari in an in-depth question and answer about the mechanics of it all.  
  
The faint sound of footsteps came from upstairs, and Fai excused himself from the table, though his absence was scarcely noticed.

* * *

  
The bed beside him was empty, and Kurogane leaned over each edge to check the floor. He wouldn't put it past Fai to wait until the middle of the night and move to the floor. Luckily the room was empty. It was far too early in the morning to try and beat some sense into him.  
  
He shoved himself up on his good arm and rotated the other shoulder around, wincing when some of the attachments stretched painfully and pulled at the tender muscles. The floor was surprisingly soft and warm under his feet, considering he didn't remember any carpets. The pile of Fai's clothes he'd stepped on seemed unperturbed by the glare he directed at it.   
  
He wasn't angry at it, per se. The frustration originated more from embarrassing memories than anything else. Red flushed across his face. He had never been able to forget the sight of Fai wandering around their room starkers in one of the first worlds they visited. Not that he was particularly concerned with putting those images out of his mind anymore.  
  
Since that particular incident had been restricted to the confines of their room, Kurogane was fairly certain Fai wasn't wandering around the house nude. His gaze fell on a stack of clothes by the door, confirming his suspicion.   
  
The pants were very similar to what he normally wore, and the sleeveless shirt fit comfortably around the sore attachment point. The mobility of his mechanical arm had been decreasing recently. He reached for the over shirt, winced in pain, and tried again with the other hand.  
  
After three tries where he not only couldn't quite get his arm high enough to easily pull the shirt over his head, but had to stop each time because the fabric kept getting snagged on the rough bits of his arm, he whipped it at the bed with a snarl of frustration. He hated feeling weak. He needed his arm. Hell, he'd even used it last night to slap that asshole's hand away from Fai, and the pain that gesture had caused was still a dull ache in the back of his shoulder.   
  
Kurogane retrieved the shirt and tried again. Regardless of the damage he caused himself, and despite the fact that Fai had shown himself more than capable, albeit unwilling, of defending himself, Kurogane would always intervene. Just because Fai had learned to cope with pain didn't mean that he should be forced to.  
  
The shirt caught again partially over his shoulders.  
  
"Morning, Kuro-rin! There's breakfast downstairs." The bright voice could only belong to one person. "What _are_ you doing?"  
  
"It's stuck, idiot." He growled and tried not to imagine how ridiculous he looked with his arms shoved over his head and bunches of fabric obscuring his face and shoulders.  
  
"….you really are hopeless."  
  
The last time those words were uttered, they were accompanied by a soft expression - a true smile that Kurogane had not seen before and had only caught fleeting glimpses of since.  
  
Fai rose to his tiptoes to reach Kurogane's arm, untangling the sleeve and slowly lowering it over metal muscles and connectors. A piece of the upper sleeve caught around his wrist, and Fai stretched farther to reach it. He reached out a hand to balance, his fingertips just barely touching Kurogane's abs.  
  
His muscles jumped under the feather light touch, felt even through the fabric. The shirt finally pulled free, and he lowered his arms slowly, palms ghosting scarce millimeters from Fai's hips. At this distance, it would be so very easy to pull the irritating mess that he'd somehow managed to fall in love with into his arms.  
  
The world backed away for a moment while his hands hovered indecisively.  
  
Fai had suffered. Not only was he older than Kurogane, but he was far more damaged than he ever let on and far more solemn than the happy facade indicated.  
  
Kurogane had pushed him once in Tokyo, too terrified at the prospect of loosing him to worry about the possible ramifications of his actions. He'd lost him anyway, at least for a little while. For all of his bravado and self-confidence, he wasn't sure that he dared to rush him again.  
  
But the fingers pressing against his stomach were making it awfully hard to resist.  
  
A deep-toned bell sounded six times from beyond the window, followed by the haunting melody they'd heard from the statue last night.  
  
"Ah, sorry. I'm interrupting."  
  
They both jumped. The chimes had covered her approach. Kurogane yanked his shirt the rest of the way down.  
  
Sari leaned on the doorframe and jerked a thumb over her shoulder. "It's time to get to work. I'll be downstairs."  
  
"Alright!" Fai broke away from him.  
  
His hand moved of its own accord, catching the narrow wrist. "Mage."  
  
"Kuro-tan?" The goofy smile faded slowly under Kurogane's serious gaze.  
  
"Be careful." He didn't know what working with Sari would entail, but he also hadn't missed the scars on her hands and forearms, and Fai wasn't exactly known for promoting his own safety.  
  
But, damn it, that hadn't been what he'd meant to say.  
  
"Are you worried about me, Kuro-myo?"  
  
"Yes."  
  
The teasing expression on Fai's face faltered and was replaced with the one reserved for the times when his ribbing solicited an unexpected response.  
  


* * *

  
A hanging of brown and tan batik fabric at the very back of the vaulted workroom concealed a narrow door. Sari swept the hanging aside, tossing the folds of fabric over a hook above the door, and unlocked it. She turned to gesture Fai through and stopped, eyeing Kurogane. "And just where do you think you're going?"  
  
Kurogane met her gaze. "You said it was time to get to work."  
  
"For us." A gesture indicated herself and Fai. "Mika will be down in a few minutes. Given what the kid seems to be interested in, I figured he'd be happier working with him on the bikes."  
  
"Kuroi too." Fai chimed in. "He was very interested in Mika's bike."  
  
"Well, of course. He's the husband."  
  
Fai blinked. The conversation had slid sideways out of its expected progression. The tone seemed to suggest that he'd made a very stupid statement. He really needed to get a better clarification on those terms.  
  
The fact that Kurogane was being effectively banished from their presence was either a blessing or a curse, and he couldn't quite decide. This morning had been dangerous. In such close proximity, Fai had been only heartbeats away from tightening his grip on Kurogane's shirt and pulling him into a kiss. The prospect of taking that final step left him trembling in abject terror.  
  
Sometimes he was fairly certain that he needed to be a braver man. The real Fai probably would have stormed up to Kurogane and declared his feelings long before this, and as much as he tried to be his twin, some personality traits simply couldn't be emulated.  
  
In fact, Kurogane's personality was more like his twin's than his own was, which meant that Kurogane should have already….  
  
"Are you okay? You look like you're going to throw up."  
  
He smiled quickly. "Just worrying about whether or not I'll be able to help you. Kuro-tan can tell you that I'm usually more trouble than I'm worth."  
  
"Well, let's find out, shall we?" Sari pushed him ahead of her.  
  
The doorway opened into a crowded but well-kept store. Prosthetics of all shapes and sizes hung in three tiers on the walls. Spare gears, wires and tubing – the use of which he couldn't even begin to understand – were sorted and kept in bins on floor around the perimeter of the room. The center of the room had a circular raised platform with a chair sitting next to it and an assortment of measuring and marking implements. The wide window at the storefront looked onto a deserted street. A wood and cloth mannequin dressed in clothes similar to Sari's stood in the window with one side of its skirt hooked up to its hip to reveal a full-length artificial leg.  
  
Fai turned back and watched Sari straightening out the fabric hanging to cover the open doorway. "Is it common for people here to lose limbs?"  
  
"Well, most of the wives either work at the power plant or with the drilling company – we're looking for other reservoirs of heated water. We have safety regulations, but accidents happen. I'd say about half of us have an artificial piece somewhere. Not to mention the husbands. They're in here about every other day." She shrugged. "Mostly it's fingers, toes, and some eyes. Some have lost feet or hands, and only a couple have lost entire limbs. And that's just the wives. The husbands, well, that's a whole other story."  
  
Since she didn't seem inclined to elaborate, he didn't push the subject. He linked his fingers with a prosthetic hand, pushing it around to watch the articulation of the joints. "You made these?"  
  
"I build them, sell them, and repair them. We're a one-stop shop." Sari pulled a heavy leather apron from behind the counter and threw it over her head. The tools in the pockets jingled. "We've got a couple of orders to fill before we open the shop. Come on."  
  
He touched a couple of the prosthetics on the way back to the workroom. The machining and detail were exquisite.  
  
"Oh, and we're going to be working with a lot of hot metal and small rivets and screws. You'll want to tie your sleeves back or you'll either light them on fire or manage to knock everything on the floor."  
  
When he undid the cuff and started to roll them up, she stopped him. "There should have been a couple of bands with the clothes."  
  
So that's what those were for. He fished the slightly stretchy bits of cloth from his pocket and shoved them over his bicep.   
  


* * *

  
Hydraulics hissed behind the door, and Mika grabbed the wide handle at the base. With a gentle tug, he set the door sliding upwards on its rails. They ducked under it into a long warehouse.   
  
Five bikes sat against the right hand wall. The one closest to the door was covered in a waxed leather, fitted tarp, but the visible ones appeared to age away from the door. All were in beautiful repair, but the farthest one was constructed of battered metal pieces that looked to have been cannibalized from no less than fifteen other machines.  
  
Mika followed his gaze. "Man, I do not miss those days. Don't get me wrong, I loved my first bike, but there's only so much you can do with race money, especially if you want to eat." He swept the cover off the closest bike with the air of a magician and ran a hand over the burnished casing over the piston. "Alright, Syaoran was it?" A brief pause was given for confirmation. "Syaoran-kun, can you grab that control box? Something was running strangely with the connectors last night and I'd like to take a look at it."  
  
The control box had four buttons arranged in a square and a twist of wires coming from one end and disappearing up into the ceiling. Mika pressed a button, and a hum echoed from the farthest corner of the warehouse. "I only use it occasionally." He confessed. "And I store it at the far end, otherwise I would be constantly smacking my head on it."  
  
A hook hanging from a wide crosspiece slid down the length of the building at just about eye level.  
  
"Knock, knock!" A female voice called out over the din of the crane.  
  
Mika twisted, made an adjustment to the position of the crane and set the control box on the floor. "Hey! What are you here to steal today?"  
  
"What, I have to be here to borrow something? Can't I just be stopping by to wish you good morning?" The newcomer spread her hands in an attempt at innocence.  
  
"I guess there is a first time for everything."  
  
"Oh, I'm hurt!" She swept her long braid back over her shoulder and mumbled. "I was also wondering if you have any four and a quarter wire casing."  
  
"I knew it!" Mika's voice took on a teasing tone, but he capitulated. "There should be some in the shelves on the back, but you're going to have to dig for it yourself."  
  
She offered a greeting to Syaoran and Kurogane as she passed.  
  
"That's Ami. We're family by marriage - she's Sari's brother's husband."  
  
While it had been a little strange that both Mika and Sari had so easily accepted two members of the same gender as being husband and wife, the cultures they'd encountered on their travels had wide ranging viewpoints about those type of relationships, and it wouldn't be the first open society they'd been dropped into. The reversed gender for the two terms, however, threw him for a loop. "She's the husband?"  
  
"What? You think I can't ride a bike?" Ami had a brown loop of tubing tucked under her arm.  
  
The confrontational tone set him on edge. "What the hell does that have to do with being the husband?"  
  
"Were you raised under a _rock_? Wives work, husbands ride." The word 'idiot' was implied in her tone.  
  
Suddenly Sari's odd assumption that he would work with Mika made a great deal more sense. Mokona's way of introducing them seemed to have streamlined them into their career choices in this world.

* * *

  
He nudged the door open with his elbow, juggling the bags of groceries while kicking clumps of snow off his shoes. The snowstorm had lasted all day, relentlessly piling up several inches of accumulation over those hours. The store had been relatively quiet because of the weather – only a couple of customers had stopped in to pick up the prosthetics he'd helped Sari repair. The rest of the time had been spent building a pre-made hand. He'd expressed surprise that she even bothered to make any ahead of time, and she'd demonstrated the adjustment screws that changed everything from circumference to length to flexibility and allowed for precise fitting of the pieces to their recipients.  
  
"When someone loses a limb, the last thing they want to do is sit around and wait for a mechanic to create a new one for them. By pre-making an adjustable prosthetic, I can cut that wait time in half." She'd explained.  
  
After the shop closed, they'd ventured out into the weather to get food. Sari had informed him that she wasn't used to having quite so many people in her house and, if they didn't stock the pantry, everyone was going to be eating what they had for breakfast for all three meals.  
  
"Fai!"  
  
"Fai-san, welcome home." Syaoran took the bags from him, allowing him to bend over to pull off his boots. He handed one of the bags to Mokona, who balanced it on its head and wobbled towards the kitchen.  
  
"Thank you." He straightened and stepped forward, noticing the puddle of melted snow only at the last minute. He stutter-stepped, hoping to avoid getting his foot soaked, but his momentum was already carrying him forward and forced him off balance. The boxes and papers in the hall were so precariously stacked that they provided little in the way of balance, and he flailed his arms for a stable handhold.  
  
A hand closed around his upper arm, another around his waist and lifted him over the wet patch.  
  
"Hyuu, Kuro-tan saved me!" Old habits die hard, and he did so enjoy the look of exasperated disbelief Kurogane always mustered when he said something particularly annoying. Only then did he realize that he was caught between Kurogane's arm and his chest.  
  
"My word, public affection in the middle of the hall? There could be children around you know." The woman in the doorway addressed the comment over his shoulder to Kurogane before actually focusing on Fai. "Kudos, big man! I didn't think your wife would be such a looker." The words were punctuated by a fist bump to Kurogane's shoulder as she edged passed him.  
  
The comment was so surprising that Fai completely forgot he'd intended to struggle. "Did you meet them today?"  
  
"I met the woman – Ami. The man's her wife and also happens to be Sari's brother."  
  
"He's the wife?" Fai leaned around Kurogane's bicep to watch the two retreat deeper in to the house.  
  
"Hn. I asked the same thing. The way they use the terms is based off of occupation, not gender." He repeated as much as he could remember from Mika's description. "This town was started about fifty years ago when a group of miners discovered the geothermal spring. The technology for converting steam to electricity was apparently nothing new, but the idea of using naturally produced steam was unique. The power plant provides heat to this town, but also supplies electricity to the three towns down the valley to the south. This town built up around the power plant as more and more people moved up here to support the growing demand for power. The winters here in the mountains are harder and longer than what they'd been used to in the lower villages. It became tradition for the village to gather in the arena simply to keep from freezing when the temperatures plummeted. They'd bring in the vehicles to keep them from freezing. The gatherings always involved alcohol, which led to drunken dares and bets, and led pseudo-competitive racing in the arena. It quickly became the local entertainment. The employment is divided fairly evenly between the riders – who provide entertainment on a weekly basis – and everyone else."  
  
"The next race is in two days. All riders are expected to participate, and Mika has agreed to take any winning as a partial payment for room and board. Your work with Sari will cover the rest."   
  
Fai wished that the arms encircling him had loosened a little. With the grip Kurogane had on his chest, he would likely be able to feel Fai's heart falter a beat. Sari's words rose unbidden – Now, the husbands, that's another story. Given the scenario that Kurogane had described, Fai had no doubt that the husbands, on average, had a higher percentage of lost limbs than the wives.  "You're going to race?"  
  
"Don't worry about me." The words were accompanied by an almost instantaneous loss of pressure around his shoulders. Kurogane shouldered him into an upright position and stepped away.  
  
"…. Alright."  
  


* * *

  
Sari cradled the fluffy animal between her fingers – she had been carrying Mokona around since returning home and was still marveling at the sentience it had seemed to display, and pulled back into the lee of the doorframe. The tone of the conversation was hard to mistake, and eavesdropping was infinitely preferable to walking directly into the middle of it.  
  
She saw the slight tremble in Kurogane's arms when he heard the fear in Fai's words – he must have heard it, she'd heard it all the way from here – watched him let go as fast as humanly possible to hide that reaction.  
  
Kurogane may have been worried, but he clearly did not want to let that fear affect his wife.   
  
Fai's reaction, on the other hand, was one of someone who was being treated as a comrade as opposed to a spouse.  
  
"It's almost like they're not speaking the same language, isn't it?" She mused, forgetting for a moment that she was carrying one of their party.  
  
"They've always been like that." Mokona murmured.  
  
A soft snort met that statement. "It's a wonder they ever managed to get married."


	3. The Race

A pair of heavy leather gloves smacked the table, almost immediately followed by an irritated stream of curses. Sari planted her hands on her hips and glared at the offending piece of machinery.

"Something wrong?" Fai had ducked through the doorway from shop to workroom just before the rant, a box of cables precariously balanced in his arms.

"The engine's working."

"Shouldn't that be a good thing?"

Sari didn't answer his question. "Just turn off the steam."

Fai deposited his cargo carefully and reached over to spin the wheel that closed off the steam pipes.

All of Sari's previous prosthetics had operated using the torque that could still be generated by severed muscles if they were attached properly and the mechanisms were designed cleverly enough. That process provided very little throw for large movements, but was certainly a step up from losing the limb all together.

Mokona's appearance had sent her off on a tear to design a miniaturized engine that would provide more power and, therefore, could support a much more functional prosthetic. She'd rerouted one of the heating pipes in the house to provide steam to her workbench so that she could test out her prototypes.

The particular one she was working on was about half the length of Fai's forearm and included both the piston and the electronics needed to convert the mechanical energy to electrical to move the metal appendages. A thick cable ran to one end, carrying the steam into the chamber, two ran from the sides to drain the expended steam into a bucket by her feet, and a pair of twisted wires connected the opposite end to a meter propped up on the workbench. While steam had been running through the system, the meter displayed a reasonably constant current.

"It's producing electricity." Fai leaned against the table and stretched one hand towards the canister, only to pull back when he felt the heat rising off it. "It's getting fairly hot, though."

"That's not a problem." Sari tapped the bucket with her foot. "I can reroute the condensed water to run around the outside and that should keep it cool enough to bury it in the center of the limb with some insulation. The whole arm wouldn't be much warmer than body temperature. Actually," She grinned for the first time in the last several hours. "It'll probably be a bit of a step up. Mika doesn't have any prosthetics, but I bet they feel pretty weird. Particularly a metal one like your husband's."

His brain happily supplied the memory of a cool metal hand splayed across his stomach. Fai tended to toss in his sleep vigorously enough to work his shirt well up his chest by the morning. It was usually not a problem, but he _usually_ didn't share his bed with anyone else. This particular morning, he'd woken to Kuogane's arm thrown wide across the bed and resting on his bare abdomen.

"Ayaa, you're blushing!"

He hadn't realized it and immediately struggled to suppress it.

Sari leaned around to peer up into his face. "My word, you're _really_ blushing.  What on earth have you done with that arm?"

"It's the heat." It was a reasonable excuse. Sari's workshop was doing a fair impression of a sauna. Every inch of exposed skin on both of them had taken on a decidedly ruddy tone several hours ago, but the heat rising in Fai's face, particularly given the last suggestion, had little to do with the ambient temperature.

"Of _course_ it is." She pushed heavy dreads off her face. "But to answer your question  yes, it is a good thing that it's producing energy. That's not the problem. The problem is that I need to input a large amount of steam. Someone would have to wear a boiler," She shoved her hand out at waist height to demonstrate the size. "Just to keep it running. No one's going to trade up for larger range of motion if they had to carry something like that around."

"Some of the riders might. They could mount the boiler on the side of their bag and only rely on the engine when they're riding. The rest of the limb should work like your old designs, right?" Fai was only half-listening to what he was saying. Another idea had struck him.

"Mmm, maybe. What are you looking for?"

"Just a piece of metal about this big." He held up his index finger and thumb in a circle. Sari's etching tools resided in a kit at the end of the workbench, and he fitted the finest tip he could find to the router while she fished around for the metal. "And something to write with."

A marker landed on the desk next to him, and only a few seconds later Sari tossed a chip of metal along the same path. "Is that big enough?"

"Should be." Fai bent his head close to the surface and began sketching across it. Once the black lines were completely laid out, he went back over them with the router, carefully etching the pattern into the hard surface.

Sari hovered over his shoulder, curiosity rooting her in place though it took him almost ten minutes to finish. "It's very pretty." She offered once he'd sat back to study his work.

"Do you mind if I?" His gesture encompassed the metal bucket that was currently half full of water from the previous experiment.

"Sure, go ahead."

The top of the workbench was well insulated, and the wood floor was not, so Fai lifted the bucket to the top, grasped the disk between his hands and channeled magic through it. The inscribed lines glowed silvery-blue for a second before fading, and he dropped it into the water before it completed the spell.

"What was?" The water roiled from the intrusion of the stone and continued to roil. A few seconds later, steam began to rise off the surface. Sari leaned forward, eyebrows rising in amazement. The metal glowed red hot under the surface of the water.

"Ah, that's probably a little too warm. It'll need some fine tuning." He spread his hand wide above the surface of the water. The easiest way to stop the magic would be to grab the token itself, but that clearly wasn't an option. The glyphs rose at the pull of his magic and faded away. The water would cool eventually and he could remove the chit, alter the inscription and try again.

Sari gaped. "How. How?"

Fai grinned broadly and stretched his arms wide, very literally a magician revealing a trick. "Magic."

"Very funny." Sari frowned at the contraption, as if she was trying to figure out where the trick was. When Fai didn't offer an explanation, she finally turned towards him. "You're serious, aren't you?" At his nod, she folded her arms tightly under her chest and breathed out "I'll be damned."

Outright acceptance was the last thing he expected, though it would be hard to argue against such a blatant demonstration.

"The only people who really benefit from something like this are the ones that have full limb replacements. They're fairly uncommon here, even given the number of amputees we have, so I wouldn't need many."

"They'll stay warm forever." Fai volunteered. "I can probably make you ten or twenty before we leave."

"Brilliant. That's just brilliant. We'll have to figure out how to attach it. It can even be a closed system. The water's heated to steam, runs the piston, travels the outside to cool it  and it'll even help for efficiency because it will be partially heated by the canister before encountering the heat source  and comes back into the heating chamber." While she spoke, Sari yanked a large sheet of paper from below the counter, tossed it across the tabletop, scattering wires, connectors and writing implements, and began sketching furiously.

For several minutes, they stood with their heads together, bouncing ideas off each other and pointing and gesturing excitedly as they worked quickly to capture the design.

With a grandiose sweep of her pencil, Sari began to define the outlines of the prosthetic around the engine, and Fai straightened. He could offer very little assistance in this bit, and the heat in the room was beginning to get to him. He retreated to the kitchen to retrieve a pitcher of water and a couple of glasses. If he was suffering in the heat, he could only imagine how oppressive it must feel to Sari in her long skirts.

The curtain between store and workroom was swinging slightly when he returned. He shot it a quizzical glance as he handed one of the glasses over to Sari.

"Customer. He's got replacements on his left leg from mid-thigh down and four  no, five  fingers. I see him fairly regularly for tune-ups, so he knows to come back here if I'm not in the front. Good thing, too." She grinned sheepishly. "I didn't even notice him until he was leaning over my shoulder, let alone hear the bell when he opened the door."

"His whole leg? Sounds like he'd benefit from this."

"Absolutely! I've just got to get it working." She dropped several bolts onto the corners of the diagram to keep it from rolling up. "I needthe six and seven gauge wire rolls and the half inch tubing. Should be somewhere in the store."

Fai nodded and turned to retrieve the supplies while she began retrofitting the engine prototype.

* * *

Kurogane thumbed the paddle under this right hand, closing off two of the vents to the central piston. As the pressure decreased, the piston slowed as did the bike, and the machine's hum gave way to a slow, rhythmic clunking. He stuck a foot out to touch the ground occasionally to keep balanced while the bike crawled forward.

Ahead of him, Mika had slowed as well to navigate the throngs of people streaming into the arena. Shouts rang out on all sides. Bets were placed in a snippet of conversation from the right. A young girl on her father's shoulders waved two flags  one with Mika's name emblazoned on it. Mika caught his gaze. "The other flag is for her mother. She's a good rider, but is really just coming into her own now that she's got her wife's financial backing. A few more wins, and she'll be competing at my level."

Most of the crowd parted before Mika, and though Kurogane was clearly not as well known, he received some good-natured claps to the shoulder and wishes of good luck that seemed to spill over from those offered to Mika.

They slid to a stop next to a group of other riders, and Kurogane craned his head back to study the massive door looming in front of them.

"Rider's entrance." Mika called over the noise. "They'll open it up in a minute and then we'll go through to the holding area. Only those in the current race are allowed to be out on the track, but this end has a smaller loop that you can ride around to stay loose before your heat and some cranes and lifts so that you can do basic maintenance. Course it won't matter for you, since you'll be in the first heat with the rest of the beginners."

A jet of steam blew from the top edge of the door, and pulleys began to spin, slowly rolling the door back. Mika gunned his bike, easing through the narrow slots between other riders.

Kurogane followed him, but didn't miss the glares aimed his direction that Mika didn't receive. Apparently he was guilty of something other than cutting the line.

Mika pulled to a stop by the metal lockers that lined the interior space, kicked the bike stand down with a toe and climbed off. His eyes followed Kurogane's, which were currently locked in a death glare with a slender man who was almost his height and sporting a long, black ponytail.

"Don't take it personally. Most of them won't eat tonight if they don't at least place in the race." Mika tossed a bundle of cloth in his direction. "They're just pissed because you're already a step up 'cause you've got one of my bikes."

Kurogane grinned. False modesty was something he'd never found any use for in himself or others. The bike Mika had leant him may have been old, but it was well cared for, and any idiot could tell at a glance that it was head and shoulders over the rest of the junkers waiting outside.

Mika paused from peeling off his overcoat. "Dunno why Yaro'd have a beef with you, though. He's in the next level up from yours, so you won't be racing each other."

In retrospect, Yaro's gaze held more speculation than animosity, and Kurogane eased back on the enmity - just because the other riders were behaving like assholes didn't mean that it had to spill over on the one's who weren't.

"You're gonna want to put those on." Mika pointed to the clothing he'd just tossed at Kurogane. "The piston's aren't all that well insulated, and when you're riding on the street it's pretty easy to avoid resting a leg on them. Out here on the track, you're going to want to be able to lean on it to make some of the corners."

Kurogane shook out the heavy leather chaps and buckled them on over the tight black pants he'd been wearing up until this point. Yasha's standard armor had included something fairly similar to keep clothes from wearing down against the scaled skin of their mounts.

Thoughts of Yasha's camp brought back a flood of memories. He had known Fai's skill  had seen it in him from the very beginning and had watched him apply it to his strange approach of half-hearted evasion  but to see him do battle was truly a thing of beauty, and it had been in Yasha's camp that Kurogane had realized just how deep his feelings for his infuriating companion were beginning to run.

Though they shared no common language, he had willingly sought out Fai as a training and even drinking companion, commonly eschewing the company of most of his compatriots with whom he could actually hold intelligible conversations. At first, he believed that pity motivated his actions. After a couple of months, he was insisting to himself that it _had_ to be pity driving him to spend time with Fai even though it was clear that Fai was managing to communicate just fine through a complex series of pointing and hand gestures.

A month or so later, Kurogane had to admit that that he was choosing Fai's company and, perhaps even more surprising, that Fai was choosing his, given the number of soldiers that invited him drinking that he turned down.

Fai was far too intelligent to be hamstrung by something as insignificant as a language barrier, but it had taken Kurogane half their time there to realize just how much Fai understood, and he'd cursed himself for not having put in the effort to learn any of Fai's language  he still wondered how much Fai had told him during that time. Even though he had learned the secrets of Fai's past since then, he still suspected that Fai had admitted things that he had never voiced either before or afterwards.

Worry for the kids. Perhaps true, unbridled desire to live, despite his typical actions. Maybe even something about Kurogane himself

Fai frustrated him in a way that no other human being had ever managed  even Tomoyo, who had certainly pushed every button she'd ever discovered in his psyche on multiple occasions  and most of that irritation derived from the dichotomy between Fai's actions and words.  Why couldn't he just say and do what he meant?

Why was he only ever honest when no one could understand him?

A spike of pain drove the thought from his mind, and he subconsciously grabbed his shoulder with a grimace, rubbing at the skin until it subsided to a dull ache. Thankfully the arena was hot enough to loosen and ease the knotted muscles.

Unfortunately, it was so warm that he was already coated in sweat, and he'd barely been inside for five minutes. He tugged at the hem of his shirt.

The shirt came off remarkably easier than it had gone on a couple of mornings ago, and he was intensely grateful for that. Getting caught in his shirt around Fai had been embarrassing but ultimately inconsequential. In competitions like this, however, intimidation was a highly motivating factor, and he was fairly certain he would lose any status with the rest of the riders if he couldn't take his own shirt off.

He rolled his shoulder, feeling the black, sleeveless shirt catch slightly on the attachment cables for his arm. A quick tug pulled it back away from the artificial limb, but the point where skin met one of the cables must have been bleeding because blood had dried to the shirt. The scab was yanked away along with the cloth, and the wound began to ooze. He snarled a curse under his breath and searched for something that wasn't his white over shirt to mop it up. With his vast experience of bleeding on all assortments of colors and fabrics, he knew full well how hard it was to get blood out of white cloth. Their hosts would probably not be amused by having to clean that up.

"Here."

A fairly clean piece of gauze appeared under Kurogane's nose. He took it and pressed it to his shoulder, nodding in thanks to Yaro.

Before turning away, Yaro studied his shoulder for an almost uncomfortably long amount of time.

The prosthetic was of strange design for this world and had drawn several hours worth of examination from Sari over the last day, so his interest wasn't entirely unusual, but something in his expression set Kurogane on edge.

Music blared suddenly out of the speakers mounted in the corners of the room followed by a call for the riders in the beginner's race to approach the start line, and it knocked all thoughts of Yaro out of Kurogane's mind. He fell into line with riders of all ages  youths just beginning their careers and older riders who hadn't ever won enough races to move to the more competitive groups, all with bikes that looked like they'd been put together at the scrap yard.

Though very little rested on him winning or even placing in this race, he was, by nature, a competitive person. His vision narrowed down to a tunnel focused on the track, and his lips quirked up in the bloodthirsty smirk that always seemed to affix itself to his face right before a battle.

* * *

A deep thrumming rose from the far end of the arena followed by a wave of noise from the people gathered in the stands. The races drew crowds from all of the neighboring towns, and the arena had been extended to accommodate raised stands around the racetrack simply to make enough room for the observers.

Fai paused halfway up the stairs and turned to follow the gaze of the gathered masses. The riders had appeared at the start line  several stood high on the foot pegs, waving wildly or pumping closed fists in the air. Kurogane was easy to spot, one long leg kicked out in front of him, the other folded against the side of the bike, and his arms draped idly over the handlebars. Even from this distance, Fai could see that the red eyes were narrowed and focused on the track before him.

Cheers rose around them. Syaoran cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted, "Good luck, Kurogane-san!"

Mokona quickly echoed him, but its voice didn't carry over the background noise.

"Waii, Kuro-tan! Good luck!" Fai shouted out of a purely knee-jerk reaction - the exuberance did not reach farther than his tone and expression.

In depth analysis of Sari's new designs had kept him up into the wee hours of the morning. When he'd finally sought out their bed and crawled in under the covers, Kurogane had fallen into a deep sleep. He had thankfully been sleeping on his back  one of the few positions that didn't seem to bother his arm.

Fai'd stretched out carefully on the small strip of mattress left vacant at Kurogane's left side. The minute he'd settled in, a cold metal arm wound around his waist and pulled him against Kurogane's broad chest. If he hadn't been so warm and very comfortable, Fai would have shoved him back onto his back.

But he had been very warm, very comfortable and very tired, and it hadn't been as if Kurogane was lying on his prosthetic, so Fai'd let himself drift off.

He'd been curled into a ball in the center of an empty mattress when he woke, and there had been a couple of faint streaks of blood on his shoulder right next to the imprints left by Kurogane's metallic arm. _Kuro._

"Fai-san?" Syaoran was at the top of the stairs, looking back over his shoulder at Fai. "Our seats are up here."

Fai shook himself out of the memory, glad that he had been staring blankly out at the track rather than the floor or the people around him, and smiled brightly. "Coming!" He took the stairs two at a time to reach them. "Looks like Kuroi can beat any of the people out there, doesn't it?"

"Mmhm!" Syaoran nodded, studying the other racers.

As they took their seats right up against the railing that divided the track from the audience, Fai firmly shoved the worry into the back of his mind. Even though a source for a new prosthetic had quite literally fallen into his lap, Fai had no money in this world, plus it would require removing Kurogane's current limb  something that he wasn't sure any of them could even manage. A trip to Piffle might leave him exhausted for a few days, but it would be a small price to pay.

Plus Kurogane had gone to great lengths to hide his infirmity from Syaoran and Mokona ever since they'd first arrived in Clow, and Fai was not going to let his anxiety spill over and make the other two suspicious.

"It's starting!" Mokona vaulted to the railing, its voice drowned out almost instantly by the sound of the horn starting the race.

The bikes leapt forward, kicking dirt out behind them, and screaming as their riders brought them up to full power and slid alongside their competitors, jostling for position. The first group whipped by their spot so fast, that had Fai not noted the color of Kurogane's clothes and bike, he would not have been able to separate him from the rest.

Five laps around even a rough, hilly track like this at that kind of speed would take only a matter of minutes. The bikes whined as they climbed out of a depression and hooked a sharp corner to pass back over the start line.

Two laps later, and the race was going well. Kurogane had put almost an entire half lap between him and the closest racer, and Fai found himself on his feet cheering with the rest of the crowd. The same thrill that had gripped him during the Piffle races filled his heart for brief seconds before a sudden feeling of dread settled into his stomach.

 _What was wrong?_ False premonitions simply did not happen with his magic. No one was near Kurogane, and his bike appeared to be operating normally. _Something. Something._ The magic pounded up the back of Fai's skull, screaming to be acknowledged. The audience? Fai looked around frantically. Perhaps it had nothing to do with Kurogane.

An individual who could only be described by the cliché 'tall, dark and handsome' moved purposefully in his direction, tucking a strand of long black hair behind his ear and aiming a piercing gaze on Fai.

The magic was throbbing now, faster even than his heartbeat, and it pulled his attention away from the man advancing on him just long enough for an iron grip to snap around his wrist with enough force for the man's nails to bite into his skin. If the magic would just shut up for two seconds, Fai would politely remove the offending appendage, possibly without even breaking all of the man's fingers.

But the sick feeling brought on by his premonition was too severe for a simple harassment. It had to be something else. Fai started to look around, choosing to deal with unwelcome attention later, but the grip on his wrist shifted, and he was yanked forward until he was nose to nose with the man.

"Do you really think you can get away with treating your husband like that?"

A collective gasp rose from the audience, lifting the hairs on the back of Fai's neck, and he just couldn't seem turn his head fast enough to see what had happened.

* * *

The front wheel dropped into a deep rut as he revved the bike over the top of the hill. The course banked sharply to the left, the apex of the turn rising steeply to the base of the stands. Kurogane gripped the handlebars and tried to wrench the front around to make the turn, but the groove deepened as it cut straight across the corner and the bike remained firmly locked into it. It was likely left over from a frantic braking attempt during a practice run, where a locked up tire churned into the soft soil.

He reached to the switch on the body of the bike that reversed the direction of the piston, slapped it into reverse and slammed the insulated vents from the heat source closed. Unfortunately, the interior cavity of the engine was far too warm to stop converting water to steam in short order. Combined with his momentum, the bike would not be able to stop before reaching the observers. The brakes clamped down as well, buying him a few seconds, but not making enough of a difference.

Kurogane reversed his grip on the left handlebar and yanked hard and fast towards his body while pushing away with his right hand. Something snapped with a metallic twang, but the wheel finally broke free. Pain ripped through his left shoulder when the resistance was finally released and his elbow snapped back. Off balance and no longer in a functional orientation, the bike tipped, dumping him onto his side. He slid across the dirt and slammed into the wall lining the racetrack.

He lay there for a minute, gathering his wits and then slowly raised his head. In the blurry periphery of his vision, he spotted someone who was probably Fai given the general shape and size, which was all he could make out, sprinting across the loose soil towards him. A low-grade ache started in his right arm due to a combination of scrapes from the slide and wrenched muscles, but he was more concerned with the pain screaming up the nerves in his left shoulder.

Three of the attachment cables had snapped loose from his skin. The metal muscles in the biceps had not broken altogether, but looked decidedly frayed in some spots. The biggest issue was the long attachment from elbow to wrist. The wires were exposed and sparking, and the set of metal fasteners the conveyed forearm signals to the delicate tendons in the hand had snapped straight across the center.

The pain spiked the minute he tried to sit up, and darkness bit at the edges of his vision. He fought it because Fai had just skided into view, dropping to his knees beside Kurogane and reaching a hand towards him.

"Kurogane!"

The scared look plastered across Fai's face burned back the pain and impending unconsciousness. "Stop worrying, mage. I'm fine." Several other people had reached him, and he felt hands touch his back and sides, stabilizing his injuries as they rolled him onto his back. He would have said more, but Fai was shoved back by the press of people, and the relentless urge to pass out overwhelmed his self-control.

* * *

The stark white sheets made Kurogane's skin look darker, but Fai could still see just how pale he was compared to normal. Kurogane's arm and his fingers were roughly the same color  something he hadn't seen since Nihon. The injuries from the crash may have been superficial, but the damage to Kurogane's prosthetic was irreparable. The only option now was to remove it once Kurogne's condition had stabilized. Fai pillowed his head on his crossed arms, leaning on the bed next to Kurogane.

He'd thought they were past this. None of them had sustained any injuries more serious than a few cuts or bruises after leaving Clow. It was a pleasant change and had lulled Fai into a sense of safety. He could have easily gotten used to not having to worry over whether or not one of them was going to die.

His eyelids drooped, and he fought back the warm embrace of sleep. Kurogane was still in critical condition. If something happened. If something.

Exhaustion took over, and he fell into a fitful sleep.

Incoherent voices yelling in the hallway startled him awake. He jerked up, hand tangling with Kurogane's as he yanked backwards. He stared blankly at their entwined fingers, caught between confusion as to when he'd taken Kurogane's hand and elation that he'd woken up before Kurogane and could safely extract his hand without Kurogane being any the wiser.

Sari's voice became intelligible. ".and the damage to the prosthetic was due to the crash. You have no right!"

"The skin around that attachment point was bruised, scabbed and even freshly bleeding in a couple of places before the race."

That was the same voice as the man who'd grabbed him in the stands. Fai had quite literally ripped his arm out of his grip when Kurogane'd crashed, though he had been far too worried to really enjoy the curse of pain that had elicited.

"Are you officially asking to file this report?" That came from someone he hadn't met yet.

"Yes."

"I can't believe you're buying this!" Sari was clearly furious. It seemed like an overreaction to Fai. The door whipped open, and she stormed through and slammed it with enough force to shake the lamp on the adjacent table.

He pushed slightly away from the bed. "What's going on?"

Sari leaned against the inside of the closed door and pressed a hand against her face. "Yaro is calling for a challenge."

"What does that mean?"

"He is calling into question your suitability as Kurogane's wife. It's a very old law that was originally intended to give the wives' a means of escaping a bad or loveless marriage. Though we don't have rights to initiate a divorce on our own, a friend or family member could issue a challenge. In reality, it's an antiquated and relatively pointless law. The husbands can leave whenever they want, but they don't because they need us, and most wives won't enter into a marriage agreement unless they're certain. We don't have any imperative to make it official earlier rather than later, so the law is very rarely used under its original intention. Unfortunately, there's an addendum to a subclause to aanote that was stuck in between the pages that allows for riders to quite literally steal wives." Her eyes finally lifted to meet Fai's.

"Steal?"

"I don't know why it was added  probably because some higher up had the hots for someone else's wife. We've been fighting to get it removed for years. Basically, it calls for a one on one race, winner take all. But it can only be enacted if the wife has demonstrated a lack of care-giving for their husband."

"That doesn't make any sense  why would anyone want to abduct a wife that was not taking care of their husband?" His fingertips came in contact with the Kurogane's forearm before he'd even made a conscious decision to move. _This is my fault. It came about because I chose to turn a blind eye to how much he was hurting._

"Of course it doesn't make any sense," She shook her head. "But it doesn't have to. The rules are clear, and, whether or not the motives are logical, our hands are tied by the letter of the law."

"How" Fai trailed off and shook his head, changing his mind as to what question he wanted to ask first. "Why is he after me?"

"I can think of a few reasons. First off, look at you. Exotic and beautiful."

His gaze followed Sari's gesture, dropping down to stare at his too thin body and lanky limbs, disbelief plastered across his face.  
"You'd be a status symbol for anyone who had you as a wife. Second," She ticked the points off on her fingers. "This particular rule doesn't usually work very well because the riders with wives almost invariably win against the riders without  they simply have better equipment. But with Kurogane injured, Yaro's almost guaranteed to win. Third, Yaro, like all of our unmarried riders, is desperate for any wife he can get his hands on. He does very well in the races, but that only means he's been bumped up in competition levels quite quickly. If he can't refurbish his bike to a higher level, he won't be able to place, and he'll be broke, even though he could have kept winning at a lower level. Plus his prosthetics take a huge chunk out of his wallet." She paused, her face looking ashen. "His prosthetics. Oh god."

"What?"

Sari sank down on the edge of Kurogane's bed. "You remember the customer who stopped in when we were first working on the new design? The one with the leg and finger replacements?" She waited for Fai to acknowledge it. "That. That was him. I was so excited, and he was so interested, I just couldn't help talking about it."

"Why does that make any difference?"

"Don't you see?" She moved from the bed to the chair next to him, leaning forward with the intensity of her words. "With you, he gets the best of all worlds. Status, money, demonstrated potential just from the few days you've been at my shop, and the possibility to do impossible things."

It took him a minute to piece together what she meant. "My magic."

"I'm so sorry. Yaro's always seemed to be an upstanding person, I never thought."

Fai closed his eyes. _Water under the bridge._ He repeated the phrase to himself several times. Given that he'd spent most of his life trying to change the past, it was excruciatingly hard to learn how to take that phrase to heart. "So what happens?"

"They will have to race within two days from the point when the challenge was issued."

"He can't race like this!" The chair rattled, knocked backwards when he leapt to his feet.

"I know." Sari put a hand against his shoulder and pushed him gently back down in the chair. "We're going to get him fixed up."

"What happens if he doesn't?"

"If he doesn't race  either because he can't or because he refuses to accept the challenge, though that's just a formality  Yaro will be considered the de facto winner. He will take Kurogane's bike, all of his money, andhis wife."

 _He can refuse to accept the challenge?_ In Kurogane's condition, with a new arm or not, another race would only serve to damage him more. The best solution would be to simply forfeit. Mokona would be able to take them out of here soon, after all. It couldn't possibly be that bad, and it would keep Kurogane from getting hurt anymore.

Sari was staring speculatively at him. "You're not really married are you? You wouldn't be even considering doing what you're thinking about if you really were."

He initially buried the urge to tell her the truth until he realized that there was not reason to keep up the subterfuge. "If we're not married, then this whole thing is moot." He trailed off when he noticed that she was shaking her head.

"We don't have much in the way of ceremonies  not enough time. You've got his beads, so you're as married as you can get in our society."

The beads were rough under his fingers, and he jerked his hand away as soon as he realized he was touching his hair.

"Why did you tell us you were married if you're so willing to throw it away?"

"It's just a long-standing joke." He snorted sadly. "I can't even remember when it started, but it always gets a rise out of him, so it became a habit for Mokona. Then after the incident with Orin, it seemed prudent to simply keep up the ruse. Kuroi must have thought so to, or he wouldn't have ever." Fai brushed his fingertips against the beads again. "Here I thought it was a good insurance of protection."

"He wouldn't have?"

"What?"

"Never mind." She waved the question off and leaned in to examine the attachment point of Kurogane's broken prosthetic. "We should probably get to work on a replacement. How did he lose his arm?" At Fai's puzzled look, she waved a hand. "Not trying to pry, it just helps to know how to make the connection to the muscles if it's smooth, jagged or even both."

"Smooth. It was cut off by a sword. _He_ cut it off with a sword." Fai clarified, though he wasn't sure why he felt the need to ensure she understood that it was not a weakness or error on Kurogane's part that cost him his arm.

Sari's head jerked up and she stared at him. " _He cut off his own arm?_ Why?"

"To save me." Fai started. He hadn't intended to say that out loud. He had never stated Kurogane's reasons for his behavior in Celes out loud, even when Soma had demanded an explanation after they'd arrived in Nihon with Kurogane broken and bleeding.

Sari chuckled quietly, her gaze softening and turning back to focus on Kurogane's arm. "He wouldn't have, huh? You're an idiot." She murmured.

* * *

The drug-induced haze only faded back under a severe force of will. Kurogane had honed his skills over his entire lifetime, and every internal sensor was telling him that he needed to be awake now because there was someone standing over him, and that person was none too friendly.

His eyelids finally responded and peeled open enough that he was able to make out a figure leaning over his bed. He tried to push himself upwards on his left arm out of sheer reflex, glancing down only when it refused to respond. All the pieces below his elbow had been meticulously removed, and the remaining parts of the prosthetic had been wrapped in some sort of stretchy mesh to hold them together and keep them from snagging on the sheets. A hand grabbed his shoulder and pulled him into a seated position.

"Sucks, doesn't it? But that fancy prosthetic that you've got is head and shoulders above anything that we've made here. You have  had, I'm sorry  fine motor functions with those fingers, whereas I can only just manage to shift gears on my bike with the fake leg I've got."

"Yaro." Kurogane croaked.

"You remember my name? I'm flattered. You'll probably be cursing it in a minute." He leaned in close, hand still tight on Kurogane's injured shoulder, and hissed into Kurogane's ear. "I'm taking your wife. I don't know what you did to luck into possession of something so exceptionally useful and unique, but he's not going to be yours for much longer."

Red tinged the edge of his vision, and he lunged forward with an incomprehensible growl, lost somewhere between flatly refusing to turn Fai over to this man and insisting that Fai was _in no way_ a possession for anyone to own.

The grip on his shoulder tightened, pain flashed up the raw nerve endings, and darkness opened its welcoming arms to him and pulled him back down into its murky depths.


	4. Missing the Point

The world returned slowly. He could feel a presence at his side, the warmth of one hand resting on his collarbone just below the prosthetic and a strange pressure on his shoulder socket. By the time he managed to open his eyes, he'd ascertained that not only did the other person pose no threat, but that, given the position, he'd probably hurt himself more by trying to pull out from under that touch.

"Welcome back." Sari half-knelt on the edge of the bed with one foot folded underneath her and the other braced on the floor so that she could lean over Kurogane. "Those sedatives pack a serious punch. I thought you'd be out for several more hours."

The prosthetic turned in its joint independently of his muscles, and Kurogane choked out a curse.

"Sorry, sorry." She pulled a tiny magnifying glass on a long chain from the front pocket of her skirt and pressed closer. "I've never seen a connection like this. It's going to take a while to figure out how to remove it."

"Remove it?"

A sad smile met his words. "This technology is unbelievable. It's truly beyond anything I've ever seen or even imagined in my wildest dreams, and I can't fix it." A couple of pieces came off in her hand, and she made a face before setting them aside. "But I might be able to replace it."

"Leave it." A quick trip to Piffle and the arm would be easily fixed. Perhaps he could even get it skinned. The rough metal didn't bother him, but he'd caught Fai staring at it often over the last couple of days. Though Fai always jerked his gaze away the moment he was discovered, Kurogane hadn't missed the blank expression that masked Fai's face whenever he was upset. He might not be able to understand the reason, but if disguising his arm as flesh and blood would keep that emotionless mask away from Fai's face, he was more than willing.

"You know, that's exactly what your wife said."

"He said...?" A situation where he and Fai arrived at the same conclusion was almost unfathomable, which meant that either Fai had undergone a dramatic personality shift or he knew something Kurogane didn't.

She cut him off. "And I think it's only fair that I warn you that your wife is about to do something incredibly stupid under the pretense of keeping you from getting hurt."

Kurogane didn't even let her finish before leveraging his weight onto his good elbow and attempting to shove her off him.

"Whoa, wait, wait, wait.!" Only the fact that her leg was braced against the floor gave her enough strength to hold Kurogane down. "It's not that immediate."

The room tilted to an alarming angle, and Kurogane abruptly stopped struggling, allowing himself to fall back completely prone.

"Given that panicked expression, I'd say this isn't the first time." A derisive snort met her statement. "I didn't think so."

He dragged his good hand over his face. "What's the idiot planning on doing now?"

* * *

Only one light burned in her house when she edged her way in and carefully balanced the annotated sketch of Kurogane's current prosthetic on top of a box of assorted gears. She followed the glow into the kitchen.

Mika looked up from the book propped open on the kitchen table. "Welcome home." He hopped off the tall stool and reached past her to retrieve a plate of food from the top of the stove. In the same gesture, he flipped the steam vent underneath it completely closed and offered her the plate.

She rose on tiptoe and planted a kiss along his jawline before sliding the plate onto the table and shaking her hand to cool it off. "Thank you." The food was still hot, and she blew on it before taking a cautious bite. "Where is everyone?"

"Syaoran and the stuffed animal headed upstairs with one of our history books about an hour ago. Fai is in your workshop  been there most of the night. He said something about refining the heat source."

Sari heaved a sigh. "I sent him home so that he'd get some rest. I should have known better."

"Did you tell Kurogane about the challenge, or do I have to break that to him?"

"I told him. I also told him about Fai's reaction."

Mika's head jerked up. "Fai let you tell him?"

"He never asked me _not_ to." Sari picked at the food with her fork. "In my experience, the only time people attempt to conceal their actions from others is when they believe the other person will either be angry, or try to stop them, or both."

"Kurogane would never let him go."

"No, definitely not." She paused to pour a glass of tea from the kettle in the center of the table. "But Fai thinks he will."

"They're married! That would be like."

"They're not." Sari interrupted

"You expecting me to just let some asshole. What?"

"Not in their culture. In fact, as far as I can tell, they're not in any sort of acknowledged relationship."

"Well that's just stupid. Anyone with half a brain can see how they feel about each other." He winced and looked over his shoulder.

Sari did the same, leaning backwards to peer down the hall. Though having Fai walk in on that conversation might sort out a great deal of confusion between the two, she suspected he wouldn't believe them. Thankfully, she could see a long shadow  Fai, no doubt, given the proportions  cast up the wall of her workshop.

"But you're right." Sari stirred the tea pensively. At Mika's curious glance, she clarified. "Regardless of their marital status, Kurogane said that he would never let Yaro take Fai." Her eyes widened momentarily in emphasis, and she cocked her head to one side. "No matter what."

Mika coughed. "That can't be good."

* * *

The pain started slowly, creeping from his shoulder across his chest and down his side as the medication wore off. He shallowed his breathing in an effort to minimize movement, but that only forestalled the inevitable.

His hand hit the edge of the bedside table and scattered the glass and pitcher of water there. Balanced on the far edge was the wood-handled screwdriver Sari had left earlier. If he stretched his fingers to the full extent, he could just knock it into his hand.

Only immobility seemed to dull the pain, so after he'd retrieved the tool, he fell back against the pillows and gasped in a couple of deep breaths.

The dull ache slowly ramped up into full-blown agony. Kurogane jammed the hilt of the screwdriver between his teeth and bit down hard.

* * *

 

A heavy weight landing somewhere in the vicinity of his stomach woke him from a fitful sleep. Fai bolted upright. His hands tangled in the thick wool garment tossed haphazardly across his bed. "What?"

Light spilled through the open door around Mika's bulky frame. "Sari just called. You're needed at the hospital."

The words drove him out of bed instantly. He scrambled into his pants. "The hospital? What's happened? Is Kuroi okay?" In an uncharacteristic fit of outward frustration earlier that night, Fai'd given one of his boots a sound kick. It had skittered across the floor, coming to rest underneath the bed, and he bent to retrieve it.

"She didn't say. Just said that she needed you there as soon as possible." Mika stepped aside to let Fai through the door.

Even deliberately slow and steady breaths did nothing to calm his racing heart, and Fai practically plunged down the stairs.

"Fai!"

Mika's voice echoed down after him. He turned just in time to catch the bundle of fabric aimed in his direction.

"It's fucking cold out there. You're not gonna do him any good if you get sick."

 _I'm not doing him any good anyway._ Though the corollary of that thought  that therefore it mattered little if he got sick - remained prominent in his mind, Fai swung the coat around his shoulders and buttoned it tight before stepping outside.

The wind howled around him, funneled down the narrow street that Mika and Sari's house faced. Wound in the noise was the unmistakable harmony of the clock organ  two o'clock in the morning. That in itself was a bad sign. Fai hadn't realized it was quite so early. For Sari to be out of the house and at the hospital at this time meant that Kurogane's condition must have been severe.

He lengthened his stride.

 _What could have happened?_ He had told Sari to leave the broken prosthetic attached. Perhaps Kurogane had countermanded that request, though Fai couldn't imagine why. Removing cables buried that deeply in Kurogane's shoulder would be inconceivably painful, especially without Piffle's technology. In this place, they would likely have to cut the flesh and muscle above the cables just to reach them.

So if it wasn't his arm, had his injuries from the crash been worse than they suspected?

He broke into a run, sinking to his ankles in the snow drifting across the road. Icy water bit at his feet through the leather boots, but it barely registered. Celes had, after all, been very cold and very snowy, and Fai had long since learned to differentiate between the cold that was simply irritating and the cold that was truly dangerous. This fell squarely into the former category, and his fear for Kurogane drove it firmly from his mind.

Two more blocks, a sharp left hand turn and he emerged from the narrow street into the open driveway the hospital faced. The wind had scoured the cobblestones almost entirely bare, and he covered the last of the distance at a full sprint.

He collided with the closest door, pushing hard on the icy glass that should have given way and swung inward, but only rattled under his assault. _Locked._ The next two doors were bolted shut as well, and Fai bit his lip as he made his way to the last one. _Please be open. Please be open. Something's wrong. He._

This one opened, and the wind chased him over the threshold and into the dimly lit, but mercifully warm, lobby.

He launched off the mat just inside the door, skidding sideways when his wet boots connected with the polished floor. Only a quick movement to grab the edge of the reception desk saved him from crashing to the ground, and he used his momentum to swing himself around the corner.

Long and narrow, the hospital stretched for nearly a block in either direction. Kurogane's room was at the far end of the second floor. The steps were a bit to tall to take two at a time, but Fai's legs were inordinately long, and he devoured the distance between the first floor and the second in a matter of moments.

When he pushed through the door into the upper hall, the space was almost uncannily silent. Not that he had expected screams  Kurogane simply wasn't the type  but given the time and the information he'd gleaned from Mika, he'd been steeling himself for some sort of panicked mayhem.

It felt like the entire area was holding its breath.

Then the moment ended. Two nurses spilled out of the door of Kurogane's room, one shouting orders at the other for medicine and bandages. The door crashed closed behind them, but not before he'd caught a glimpse of the bed beyond.

Sari knelt on the side of the bed with both hands clamped high on Kurogane's shoulder. She leaned forward on her knees, clearly putting all her weight on her hands to hold Kurogane down.

Even through the narrow space left by the swinging door, Fai could see Kurogane's face contort in pain. He watched his teeth clench hard enough that Fai was sure they would shatter.

One fact brought him momentary comfort  the prosthetic was still attached. Had Kurogane opted to have it removed here, Fai was not entirely certain that any amount of magic, technology or healing would make the stump a viable attachment point again. Kurogane's missing arm was a constant reminder of the suffering brought about by Fai's existence. He had learned to cope thanks to the prosthetic  though not perfect, the synthetic arm allowed Kurogane to continue his life as the person he was. Fai could not imagine how he would live as a permanent amputee.

Though the prosthetic was still attached, something was definitely wrong, and Fai stepped through the door behind one of the returning nurses. With both the nurses and Sari at Kurogane's bedside, there was little room left for Fai, and he hung back.

One of the nurses caught a length clear IV tubing between her fingers and injected a small amount of drug from the syringe she'd brought back with her. Within seconds, Kurogane's body relaxed visibly, and his head lolled to one side.

"Fai!" Sari caught sight of him and glanced his way briefly before turning her attention back to Kurogane.

"What's going on?" He approached the bed hesitantly. His gaze raked up and down Kurogane's body, looking for any sign of internal or external injuries, only to find none.

"I don't know." She shoved her hair out of her face and looked down at Kurogane. "We know he's in an extreme amount of pain, but we can't tell what's causing it."

The prosthetic looked normal, as did the skin around it, but Fai could only see the front. He bent to peer at Kurogane's side and then rose to lean over him so that he could see the top.

"It was bad enough that we honestly thought he'd pass out. Plus there's something. Don't touch him!" She snagged Fai's hand right before he contacted the smooth metal of Kurogane's shoulder. "Here."

Fai took the thick square of fabric that she proffered. "What's this?"

"Insulator. His arm's carrying an inordinate amount of electricity across the metal skin. There must be a bare wire inside that's resting against the skin, but I can't seem to find it." She lifted the bicep using another square of insulating fabric and pointed at the nested gears and wiring. "It's so densely packed in here that it could be anywhere, but until we either find it or turn the power off, the pain's just going to continue. Those sedatives will only work for so long, but I just can't seem to"

"Move."

"Fai, what are you?"

"Move." He insisted, and took her place the minute Sari backed away.

The bed creaked under his weight, and he settled into a kneeling position tight against Kurogane's side, both hands spread wide only a few inches away from the artificial shoulder. Glyphs glowed on the end of each fingertip before sinking into the electrically charged metal and spreading outward in front of the pressure of Fai's magic.

Magic screamed through the conductive metal, spiraling along twisted cables deep into Kurogane's shoulder. A haunting resonance vibrated back through the streams of magic so suddenly that Fai almost jerked his hands away. His involuntary vampirism had brought Kurogane's blood into closer contact with his magic than anyone else's save his own, and his magic _knew_ Kurogane's flesh and bone and sang happily at the contact.

Fai's arms trembled. Though he had suspected this kind of reaction, he had never 

He gently tugged his magic backwards until the vibrations stopped and took a deep breath to steady himself before nudging it forward again. The humming crashed over him. Even though it was internal, it washed out all sounds around him. Out of the corner of his eye, he could just make out the concern in Sari's eyes, and her lips moving in unheard questions, but he ignored them.

Two more cycles, forward and back, and he curled his magic around the disconnect where flesh met metal. He counted seven cables that he'd managed to identify and close off from Kurogane's body. "How many cables?" His voice sounded muffled. Even in tangential contact with Kurogane, his magic was making more of a racket than he thought was absolutely necessary.

Sari backed away. The drawing of Kurogane's prosthetic lay open on the side table, and she traced her fingers over it. "Seven."

At a single thought, his magic flowed back towards his hands, wrapping and weaving itself into the connectors as it went and dragging them out along with it. The ends pulled free with a sickening pop, and the prosthetic slid off the edge of the bed and clattered to the floor.

One of the nurses leaned past him to dab around the connection points with gauze. It was bleeding very little, the flesh around the conduits having long since healed over and the process for removing them being so incredibly non-invasive. Only the edges where flesh had grown over the metal oozed a little, so she wrapped a fresh bandage around the stump.

Fiery pain crawled up his chest, and Fai doubled over in a fit of coughing, one hand over his mouth. A metallic taste lingered on the back of his tongue. Even though he hadn't started yet, coughing up blood was not far behind.

He slid slowly off the bed both to make way for the nurses and to cover the debilitating pain.

"Fai, you're bleeding!"

No surprises there given the amount of magic he'd just shoved into Kurogane, and now that she mentioned it, he could feel the telltale wetness spreading down his upper lip. He raised a finger to dash it away, blotting it off on one of the bandages piled at the bedside.

"You're still bleeding." Sari pressed a clean cloth into his hand and glared at him until he raised it to his nose to staunch the flow. "You don't seem surprised."

Fai forced a bright smile while swallowing another cough. "My magic and my body don't get along all that well." He was not so successful at suppressing the next cough and was forced to wipe blood from the corners of his mouth.

Sari didn't miss it. "Using your magic injures you? Why the hell didn't you say something?"

"Using a lot of magic" Fai began to correct, wanting her to understand that the heating stones he'd been making hadn't taken anything out of him. Suddenly it was very hard to concentrate on her face. He squinted.

"You just tore yourself up inside to get his arm off?"

The whole situation sounded a lot worse when she put it like that, and Fai opened his mouth to inform her of the fact. The words refused to cooperate, so he settled for a muttered, "He was in pain."

"So you hurt yourself?" Sari shook her head in blatant disbelief. "You do realize that you being hurt causes him pain in return, right? It's the same reason you used your magic to help him despite its consequences, just reversed!"

Ringing in his ears drowned out the last couple of words. He shook his head to try and clear it, squinting at Sari when the action blurred his vision. He would have offered a retort  the circumstances were entirely different; Kurogane's life was worth far more than his, and Fai would be happy forcing him to live in pain before surrendering him to the eternal darkness - but the floor rose up to meet him, demolishing his train of thought.

* * *

There was another presence in the room, but Kurogane couldn't identify it through the haze of anesthetics. He took a guess. "Fai?"

"Sorry, just me." Sari perched on the edge of his bed. It seemed to be a favorite spot. She glanced toward the door. "And Mika. Fai's over there."

He blinked groggily, finally bringing his eyes to focus on the direction her hand was pointing after a moment  a second curtained hospital bed in his room. "What happened?!" He lunged forward, though he had no idea what he intended to do. The minute he moved, he realized that he was massively off-balance. Only Mika's quick motion to catch him kept him from tumbling out of the bed.

Although he didn't have to look to confirm the missing arm  he remembered this foreign feeling from the time in Nihon before receiving his old artificial limb  he did anyway, staring blankly at the bandaged stump.

"Fai's fine, just a little exhausted. Your arm was malfunctioning and causing you quite a bit of pain." Sari helped Mika lean him back against the pillows and tucked the sheets back in around him. "We had to remove it, so the option I recommended yesterday of simply binding the elbow of the broken one and adding a rudimentary forearm replacement is no longer on the table."

Kurogane swore under his breath.

"On the plus side, Fai removed it  that's why he's passed out over there, near as I can tell  so the damage to the surrounding tissue was minimal. We can attach one of my prosthetics relatively easily."

"But you don't have one, do you?"

"No." She shook her head. "Not an arm than I can adjust to your size and height. That's why I'd suggested the basic half-arm originally."

With his good hand flat against the covers, Kurogane struggled into a sitting position, leaning right and left to test his balance. Not too bad. If they could transfer all the controls to one of the bike handles, he might be able to muscle it around the corners. He rolled his bad shoulder back and hissed in pain.

After retrieving and replacing four different bottles from his bedside, Sari offered up two pills and a glass of water.

He took them gratefully and dropped his head back against the pillows with a thump, studying the ceiling. "How long will it take?"

"I'm going to finish it as quickly as possible, but I'll have set the land speed record for building a prosthetic if I can get it done in time for the challenge."

 _If she couldn't_ Kurogane shoved the thought aside roughly. If she couldn't finish, he'd find another way to deal with Yaro. Regardless of how long they were stuck on this world, he had no intention of yielding Fai to him. "How is he really?"

Sari followed his gaze towards the second bed. "Bloody nose. Coughing up some blood too. It seems to have settled down since he passed out."

"Idiot." Kurogane bit out the word. Fai should know better than to use his magic unless it was the only option.

One eyebrow shot skyward, and Sari folded her arms tightly across her chest. "You two hold up an impressive double standard, you know that?"

"That malfunction in my arm was painful. Very painful." He grudgingly admitted when her eyebrow lifted even higher. "But Fai's magic destroys his body. He's playing with death when he overuses it." Red eyes snapped up and pierced Sari. "I will not trade my pain for his life."

"But you know that he's willing to do that? Trade your pain for his life?"

"You have no idea how hard I've worked to break him of that habit." The painkillers were making him drowsy. He made a halfway successful grab at Sari's sleeve. "Make sure he eats something." Only sheer willpower kept his eyes open until she nodded, and he exhaled, letting his mind drift off.

* * *

"I've never seen anyone with pale hair like that."

Kurogane's eyes snapped open, a snarl building in the back of his throat before he was even conscious.

"Is it soft?"  Yaro leaned a hip against the foot rail of the bed. His lips hitched up into an oily smirk.

"Get out." Each word was carried on a harsh growl. Though he intended to leap out of the bed and forcibly remove Yaro from the room, the world swam at his first movement. He paused to let his body adjust to his new upright equilibrium.

"I am _so_ going to enjoy breaking your beads out of his hair."

"You'll never take him." Anger flashed red hot, and he balled his good hand into a fist.  

"You're not really in a position to make that argument, what with a missing arm and all." Yaro tapped one of his fingers against Kurogane's dead prosthetic that rested on a table at the end of the bed. "You really should just give him up right now and save yourself the embarrassment."

"Fuck you."

"Oh, don't worry, he will."

The world went white. Cold steel resided just out of reach in the palm of his right hand - Fai's magic buried his father's sword just under the skin, but with only one hand, he couldn't draw it. He could care less. Though the sword would provide a permanent solution to their problem, there was little as satisfying as beating the living daylights out of someone with his bare hands. He swung his arm back and let fly.

Only reactions honed through years of training saved him from connecting with Sari's cheek at full force. Even so, the blow knocked her to the ground, and she slid a few feet on the tile floor, arms coming up to cradle her head.

"What?" Kurogane gaped at her, unable to fathom what would have possessed her to step between him and Yaro while he was in mid-swing.

"God, you hit women? Looks like I'm rescuing him."

He whirled. His hands clenched.

"Don't!"

The sheer panic in Sari's voice brought Kurogane up short.

"You'll break the challenge." She pulled her knees under her and rose slowly, dusting her skirts off with one hand while the other cupped her rapidly bruising cheek. "Don't hit him, or it's all over."

"Another rule?" Kurogane snarled.

"To keep the challengers safe. The original version of the law was drafted to give wives an out from their marriage. Imagine if their husband could simply go pummel the challenger. They'd never be able to win. Because of that, any violence or sabotage towards the challenger on the part of the husband will violate the challenge, and the challenger is automatically declared the winner."

"Thank you for the history lesson, Sari." The dark look in Yaro's eyes suggested that he'd hoped Kurogane would be ignorant of the rules.

Sari smiled darkly. "He's goading you on because, even without your arm, he's worried he can't win."

"Please." Yaro rolled his eyes. "It's impossible to ride a bike with one arm. I just figured that rather than humiliate him in public, I'd let him disqualify himself here."

* * *

Everything hurt. Fai remembered this feeling all to well from the last time he'd overused his magic. Each muscle cried in protest at even the slightest movement. He rested his head back on the pillow and took several deep breaths. The pain would pass quickly enough when his magic built back up  his body was simply protesting the absence of magic at the levels it was accustomed to. Maybe in another half an hour, he'd be able to move around readily, but until then, he'd remain in the bed, awake and motionless because of the soul-deep ache.

"It's not going to happen, Yaro, so why don't you just get the hell out of here." Sari's voice carried easily from the other side of the curtain.

Fai turned his head slowly. He had no idea where they'd put him after he passed out, but a pale blue curtain secured by tracks to the ceiling surrounded the bed he was currently occupying. If he craned his head, he could just make out three pairs of feet beyond the bottom edge of the curtain.

"No, I'm curious. How long have you two been married? Just how much of you am I going to have break off of him? Regardless, it will be a great deal of fun making him mine. I guess I can't guarantee that he'll enjoy it, though."

That voice was unmistakable. Fai really wished he'd broken the asshole's wrist at the race, if for no other reason than to keep Kurogane from having to suffer through this.

But silence greeted Yaro's question, and Fai sat up slightly, watching the feet and wondering what was going on.

"Nothing to say? So callous, Kurogane!"

"Get out, Yaro!" Sari took a step towards him.

"You really don't care, do you?"

"Out." Her tone had turned to ice.

"Fine, fine." Yaro made his way towards the door. "I'm really surprised, you know. It must not have been something you wanted. Saddled with him, perhaps? Otherwise it seems like you'd be putting in _some_ effort. Maybe this is a good excuse to get rid of him?

"Out!" Sari shouted, anger burning back into her voice.

Fai watched the door close behind Yaro's heels.

"Kurogane." Sari turned towards the room's other occupant.

"Forget it."

"You probably shouldn't be wandering around."

"I'm not staying in here."

That unbelievably neutral tone tore into him.

Sari seemed to be considering something. "Alright. Come on, I know where you can go." She ushered Kurogane out and pulled the door closed after them.

Fai stared at the curtain without really seeing it, mind whirling from one incoherent thought to another. One thing that Fai had been impressed with from the very beginning was Kurogane's compulsion to protect whoever was in need. Fai had expected something to change when they left Clow, but Kurogane's rationale to stay was not what he had hoped, but rather what he had feared  it was simply that Tomoyo had the protection she needed, while Fai and Syaoran did not. Not for the first time, his body shook with relief that he hadn't made a complete idiot out of himself and assumed entirely the wrong thing about Kurogane's intentions.

No doubt he had gotten what he wanted  he had wished to know love all those years ago, and it was certainly love on his part. Naturally, he would be happier if it was reciprocated, but he could be content with this situation, especially now that he knew where he stood.

"It doesn't sound like he's planning on racing." Fai informed the empty room. "That's good. He'll have a chance to recover." Forfeiting the race would mean turning Fai over to Yaro, but Fai could handle Yaro. He might even get a chance to break a few bones.

* * *

 

Sari flinched away from a piece of wood splintering towards her face. One of the many basement rooms in the hospital, this one served as a storage room for all sorts of outdated odds and ends. She'd carefully steered Kurogane away from the more recent machinery, and given the beating the rest of the equipment was taking, it was probably a decent idea.

A satisfying crack resounded through the small room and Kurogane's fist sank several inches into a stained countertop propped up against the wall. The hit was accompanied by a grunted word that Sari thought was 'bastard.'

Much longer and Kurogane was going to collapse with pain. The punches were already slowing, and he'd leaned forward to rest his forehead against the wall next to it.

She could see some blood seeping into the bandage, but it was minor, and she was loathe to pull Kurogane away. If someone had talked about Mika like that, she knew she would not have been able to hold her temper, and Yaro's cheek would have taken the beating Kurogane was currently giving to a hapless piece of furniture.

One final solid blow and Kurogane stopped, chest heaving from the exertion. "Bastard." This one was clear and more shouted than spoken.

"You're going to have an arm by tomorrow night." Sari bit down hard on her lip. "It won't be pretty. Hell, it'll probably have to be cobbled together, but it will work. I promise."

A few cuts along the back of his hands were deep enough to bleed once free of the countertop. Kurogane tightened it into a fist and, after several long moments, jerked his head in a short nod. "Thank you."


	5. No More

He flexed his hand. The cuts along the knuckles still hurt, but that would fade, and as long as he could readily use his fingers, he wasn't worried. Any arm that Sari made would be rudimentary at best, so he would still need to have full control of the bike's switches with his right hand.

When he swung the door open, Fai was tugging the curtain that separated the room back into place. He turned around with a vaguely guilty look on his face.

"How are you feeling?"

A slight tremble in Fai's legs betrayed him even though he smiled and said, "Better. I didn't expect you to come back so soon, Kuro-tan."

 _Is that why you were fixing the curtain to make it look like you were still here?_ Kurogane thought about asking it, thought better of it, and crossed to his bed. "They want to keep me here in case there are any problems."

Faint relief shone in the back of Fai's eyes. "So, Piffle next?"

"Hn," Kurogane grunted in agreement.

"Good."

An uncomfortable silence fell between them. Kurogane wondered how long it would be before his bandaged hand drew some questions, and almost on cue, Fai leaned into his peripheral vision. Kurogane had actually raised his hand towards Fai before he noticed that Fai was staring at his shoulder instead.

Fai's fingers brushed over the skin, the concern in his face melting away. "Ink? I thought I'd..." He swallowed the last words. Given the placement of the markings, they'd probably looked like burn marks just around the attachments points. Fai's magic was certainly capable of charring skin, but something more conventional had marked up Kurogane's shoulder.

"Sari needed to take some measurements and photos for the replacement arm. Apparently, the contrast or something isn't good enough to see the attachment points." Kurogane rubbed his hand over the marks, trying to erase them. All he did was smudge them around a little.

"Arm?" The word was less of a question and more of an accusatory statement. "She's making you a prosthetic? Kuro-tan, we don't have any money in this world. I can get us to Piffle on the next jump and then we'll..."

"That's not soon enough!" Kurogane growled.

Fai held out his hands and smiled that blank comforting smile that he always used when he knew things weren't okay but wanted to pretend they were anyway. "I know it's hard adapting to something missing, but you can handle this for a few days...."

"Adapting? No matter how much adapting I do, I can't race with one arm."

"Race?" Fai's hands dropped. He glared.

"Yes."

"This is about _pride_ , isn't it?" The words came out like chips of glass. Fai's eyes had gone flat with anger.

"Yes!" He snapped. Every nerve screamed at him to grab Fai and shake him, even if it was in only by the front of his shirt with the one hand Kurogane had available. Of course it was about pride. He was _not_ going to lose Fai - not to anyone and certainly not to this asshole.

"You're impossible!" No softness and no smile this time; ire filled the eyes instead.

Kurogane recognized the shift in Fai's weight that signaled that he was about to flee and grabbed his elbow before he could. He had expected anger - had their situations been reversed, Kurogane certainly would have been angry. He had not, however, expected outright fury. The races were dangerous, but not usually life threatening. At worst, he might suffer some bumps and bruises, maybe a couple of broken bones, but nothing serious.

 _Had_ their situations been reversed, he would have worked up a righteous glower to be sure that Fai knew exactly how much he disapproved of Fai risking any sort of injury on his account, but this was something else.

"Let go." Fai stared at the doorway. Years ago, the grip Kurogane had on his arm would have elicited a fake whine of pain.

Kurogane pulled his arm closer, trying to force Fai to look at him. "No."

They'd been here before. They both knew how this conversation went.

In good form, Fai shoved it off its normal tracks. "You just can't stand to lose, can you?"

Surprise loosened his fingers and kept them loose even when Fai yanked his arm free and fled. Only after he'd chucked one of the medicine bottles across the room - he'd been cuffed for sacrificing his arm to save Fai's life, but he hadn't been yelled at and given that heart-rending disparaging glare - did it occur to Kurogane that he'd missed something crucial in that conversation.

* * *

The door was hard to wrestle open with her arms laden. Sari shifted the burden up into one armpit and yanked the hospital door wide. A brisk wind whipped through the open square. The clouds had cleared, and a bright sun overhead gave the impression that it should be much warmer outside, so she hadn't bothered to button up her overcoat. She should have known better.

With a soft curse, she shoved the papers farther up so that she could pin them to her side and paused to complete the arduous task of fastening the row of buttons up the front of her coat. The waist one was particularly stubborn where the coat was stretched over her tool belt. She tucked her chin down so that she could see enough of it to wrestle with it. Just when she succeeded, the door behind her clattered. She looked up in time to see Fai burst out of it.

"Woah, slow down there, magician!" Sari caught his shoulder with one hand just before he could plow into her. "What's got you so riled up?"

"He's an idiot! A stupid, prideful idiot who should learn that winning isn't everything." The muscles in Fai's jaw clenched tightly, but he finally seemed to notice her. "Why are you making him an arm?" His tone was accusatory.

Sari blinked. There were all sorts of answers to that question, and most of them were emphatically none of her business. At this point, she didn't really care.

"Never mind." Fai waved the question off before she could answer. He set off purposefully in the opposite direction of the house.

 _What on earth...?_ "Fai? Fai!" Sari called after him, but he didn't she any sign of having heard her. She opened her mouth to shout again.

"Excuse me, ma'am."

She whirled and snapped, "What?" at the hapless nurse.

"You left your pictures on the front desk."

Given that the majority of her brain was occupied with lists and sketches and diagrams of Kurogane's prosthetic, it wasn't too surprising. She'd forget her own head if it was possible. "Oh, right. I'm sorry."

The nurse held out the envelope tentatively.

Sari tried for a disarming smile and murmured a word of thanks. By the time she'd tucked the photos safely into the front of her coat, she'd lost track of Fai. Luckily, she'd only introduced him to a limited number of places in their town, so he couldn't have gone far.

The arena was closest.

* * *

The main door of the warehouse was closed, but the smaller side door was propped open with a chunk of brick. "And the 24 gauge." Mika's voice echoed out into the street.

Fai could just hear Syaoran issue an affirmative noise. He slipped through the door and into the warm interior. He couldn't quite keep the gasp of surprise from his voice; he'd only seen the outside of the warehouse before the last race. Racks and racks of bike parts stretched into the depths of the warehouse. Mika's elegant bike sat to the side, the covering tarp partially thrown back, and the metal covers peeled away from the handles. A number of papers marked wires within.

Syaoran emerged from the far shadows with a box piled high with loops of wire and a number of bronzy toggle switches. "I only found a few scrap pieces of the 18."

The bike that Kurogane had ridden in the previous race was leaning heavily against its kickstand in the center of the floor. It had suffered little more than a couple of scrapes to the body during the crash. Mika was crouched by the side, feeding a long tail of wire through the scaffolding under the seat. He twisted to take the handful of wires from Syaoran and rested an elbow on the bike. "Should be fine. We don't need that much of the thicker stuff."

While his attention was elsewhere and possibly due to the additional weight on the bike, the front tire twisted and the bike leaned alarmingly away from its kickstand. Mika swore, leaping to catch. He just barely got his arms around the bike's barrel before it smacked to the floor.

Syaoran dropped the box on the ground with a crash. He shoved his shoulder against the lower side of the bike and helped Mika wrestle it back into an upright position. His eyes focused on Mika's confused expression and searching hands, which were currently feeling around underneath the bike. "What's wrong?"

Mika dove below the bike, rolling onto his back and aiming a light up into the workings. He only needed a couple of seconds to study it before he groaned out, "Oh, for fuck's sake. Get the crane."

The control box sat a little ways off to the side on a rickety table that Mika used as a workbench. Syoaran grabbed it and punched the buttons. "What happened?"

But Mika was just shaking his head and muttering away under his breath. He tossed the straps around the belly of the bike and hooked them over the crane, stepping back to let Syaoran lift it. As soon as it was at chest level, he pulled off the metal covers.

Even from his position in the shadows by the door, Fai could see that something was definitely _wrong_ with the gears on the bike. Spidery cracks split the smallest gear and merged in the center where it was mounted to form a deep chasm in the metal. The bits of the gears behind it that he could see had the same scattered fractures.

Mika dropped his head against the bike. "The gears are shattered. Can you pass me that wrench?"

The indicated wrench sat on the workbench just behind Syaoran's hand. He handed it over and leaned in to watch Mika remove the busted parts. "Do you want me to get the spares?"

"I don't have spares. Even the ones for my other bikes won't fit this chain. We may be able to scrap something together, but...." Mika chucked the gears into a corner and stepped back, gnawing at his lip and shaking his head.

Fai suppressed a small smile of relief. Even Kurogane couldn't argue against the lack of bike. Kurogane's insistence on racing baffled him. Even though Kurogane had made it abundantly clear through his silence that he didn't care if Yaro took Fai, he was still going to risk injury, minor though it might be, just because his personality hated to lose to anyone at anything.

He'd said it, and Kurogane had agreed. It was about pride and winning for the sake of winning. Fai wasn't about to let him do something that stupid.

"Maybe I can..." Mika trailed off. He'd started towards the door and finally noticed Fai's presence. "Fai?"

"Ah, sorry to intrude." Fai shook the thoughts away and pushed off the wall, trying to look like he'd only just arrived, but the look on Mika's face suggested that he was failing miserably. "I didn't get a chance to see the workshop before. It's spectacular."

"Thanks." Wariness fell away from his eyes, and Mika brightened visibly at the compliment. He shoved his hands into his pockets, grinning around. "It's a pretty good place."

The bronze body of one of Mika's older bikes was smooth and vaguely warm under his hand. Fai hadn't even spared a look at the bikes during the last race - Kurogane and Mika had vanished for hours beforehand, and the wreckage of Kurogane's arm had filled his vision afterwards. Being this close to them would have been a treat - he rather liked mechanical things and their capability of replicating magical abilities - if he hadn't been scanning them for spots of weakness.  

"There's something wrong with Kuro-tan's bike?" He crouched down beside the bike and peered up at the inner mechanisms. After his experience in Piffle, he had a good handle on how machines worked. It took him only a few quick glances to understand it.

"Gears are broken." Mika grudgingly admitted, smile faltering.

"That doesn't sound good."

"No, it doesn't." The oily voice was instantly recognizable. "Well, it all depends on what side you're on. It sounds very good to me."

Mika rocked onto the balls of his feet, glaring at the intruder in his workshop door. "Get out."

Yaro waived the threat away. "No need to get all bent out of shape. I just want to talk to Fai."

"He has nothing to say to _you._ " As an unnecessary emphasis, Mika moved to stand between Fai and Yaro.

"It's alright, Mika." With a gentle hand on Mika's shoulder, Fai pushed him out of the line of fire and closed the distance to Yaro. "What do you want?"

"A compromise"

"Compromise?"

"You really don't want to see him get hurt, do you? I can see it in your eyes." Yaro leaned in close. "I can see it in the way you were looking at the bikes."

He _really_ should have broken Yaro's wrist when he had the chance. Fai gritted his teeth and stared at Yaro, his face expressionless. The comments were a good guess, but a guess nonetheless - _no one_ , save for Kurogane, read him that well. Besides, no wife would want their husband to suffer.

"You could stop it, you know. Tell him to forfeit the race. He's got up until the race to decide whether or not he accepts the challenge."

No matter how hard he tried, Fai was unable to keep the flicker from his eyes. He'd thought that Kurogane had already forfeited; he had _assumed_ that the conversation in the hospital had been about that. He shoved the confusion down. "How is that a compromise?"

"You get what you want - your husband in one piece - and I get what I want."

Fai levied an icy stare at him. "I suppose this is the point where you threaten to hurt him if I don't convince him to give up?"

"Hardly." Yaro smirked ever so slightly. "The course will do that for me."

"What are _you_ doing here?" Sari had just shouldered the door open and stopped on the threshold, glaring at Yaro. Her voice cut across what Fai ha been about to retort with.

Yaro stepped back from Fai, cocking his head to one side and then the other. "Your cheek's still looking a little banged up."

"It wouldn't be if you actually had any balls!"

"Please, I'm not the one who hit you."

" _Hit?_ " The word was snarled out from between clenched teeth, and Mika turned to Fai, looking for an explanation.

He could only shrug, as perplexed as Mika. Now that Yaro had mentioned it, though, he could see a slight shadowing across Sari's cheekbone. Fai couldn't manage to piece the scenario back together. Had it happened while he was unconscious?

"What that hell did you do to my wife, Yaro?"

"I didn't do anything," Yaro replied, rather haughtily. "Why don't you talk to the man you've let into your house."

"Kurogane-san would never!" Syaoran broke in for the first time, his dark eyes wide with indignation.

Sari put a steadying hand on Syaoran's arm and shook her head slightly.

A prolonged eye-roll spoke volumes for exactly what Yaro thought about that. "He knocked a woman halfway across the floor. That man's little better than a self-absorbed brute."

No one saw Fai move; he had been fighting for longer than most of them had been alive after all. His fist made solid contact with Yaro's nose, the force knocking him backwards a couple of steps. Fai's hands, still fisted, dropped to his sides and shook. "Kuroi is twice the person that you could ever aspire to be! He has fought and sacrificed more than you could ever imagine for all the people he travels with, and I _will not_ let you speak ill of him."

Yaro raised the back of his hand to his nose, pulling it away after a minute to study the blood that was on it. "You're remarkably loyal for a wife who's willing to walk into my arms." He leaned towards Fai almost as if he was goading him into hitting him again. Long seconds stretched between them while he leaned and Fai remained trembling but stationary. "You'll defend the slightest insult to him, but not yourself?"

"That's it." The concrete floor practically creaked under Mika's stomping gait. He grabbed the front of Yaro's shirt and dragged him towards the door. "This is my workshop, and you're not going to stand around harassing my guests." Despite protests and dragging of feet, he shoved Yaro out the door, kicked the doorstop out and yanked it closed.

The entire room let out a collective sight of relief. Sari planted her hands on her hips. "Is it locked?"

Mika nodded. He caught his wife's chin in his hands and tilted it up until the light spilled fully on her cheek. "Kurogane hit you?"

"Not intentionally. He was _trying_ to hit Yaro, and I kind of got in the way." The corner of her lip hitched up into a sheepish but unapologetic smile.

"He really tried that?" Mika scrubbed a hand over his face. "Lord, I'm glad you were there."

"Me too."

The line of the conversation escaped him. Out of everything that had happened in the hospital, Fai didn't remember Kurogane getting violent with Yaro. Quite the opposite, in fact. "He wasn't trying to hit Yaro. I heard what Yaro said, and Kuro-san didn't care."

"Tell that to the counter he punched a hole in after I dragged him out of the room." Sari snorted. "You must have missed the beginning of the conversation and the punching part. I made a bit of a racket when I hit the floor; you wouldn't have missed it."

"Hit the floor?" Fai couldn't keep the surprise out of his voice. _Kurogane hit her hard enough to knock her down?_

"He's got a pretty good arm on him, and Yaro really pissed him off. Wish I could have stepped aside and let him beat the snot out of Yaro. Would have served him right for talking about you like that."

"Wh-why?" His brain stammered on the word, repeating it. _Why?_    

"Look, if the husband does anything against the challenger - sabotage, bodily harm, or anything you can think of - then the challenge is void. Another one of those archaic rules we've got." Mika paused to wrap his arm around his wife's shoulders and hug her tightly. "If Sari hadn't jumped in, you'd already be in Yaro's bed."

That wasn't what he'd been asking about, but it explained another source of confusion.

"But," Syaoran protested. "Fai-san just hit him."

"Oh no, the wife isn't held by the same rules." Sari waved the concern away. "Believe me, we would have done something."

"Tried." Mika clarified.

"Tried to do something. Good point. _Where_ did you learn to fight like that? Or did you just sort of 'magic' your fist into his face?" She sketched quotes in the air around the word. A certain wildness around her eyes suggested that the lack of sleep last night was beginning to beat her down.

"Honey." Mika's tone of infinite patience wearing thin would have been entertaining in any other situation. "Kurogane's arm?"

She shook her head as if the action would clear the fatigue. "Right. Are you going to be able to transfer the controls? If we can do that..." She and Mika put their heads together over the bike, standing far enough away that all Fai could pick up was faint murmurs.

It didn't matter; he wasn't listening to them anyway. He was focused on the space Sari had occupied up until a few minutes ago.

She'd read the situation wrong. She'd _misunderstood_. She must have. That was all. Kurogane was just fiercely protective of his companions. He would have done the same thing if it were Syaoran and not Fai who'd been insulted. Kurogane's reaction couldn't really mean....

Could it?

* * *

Empty stands looked down over an equally empty racetrack. Machines had groomed the worst of the divots out of the track after the last race, and Kurogane dug his toe into the soft dirt just behind the start line. He'd gotten word to meet Mika and Sari at the track only thirty minutes before the race was scheduled to start. Even working all night, his prosthetic was likely still in progress, but they simply couldn't wait any longer.

There was still no sign of Yaro, which was probably a good thing. Without Sari or Mika as a buffer, Kurogane wasn't sure if he could control himself.

"Kurogane!" Sari's voice vanished into the huge dome that enclosed the arena. She was dragging a long box behind her, the corners drawing twin lines in the sand.

"You finished it?"

"Naturally." She bowed and touched two fingers to the side of her head in a snarky salute. "Even managed to get the new engines in and everything. Course, without properly mounting it to your shoulder, it'll just mean that that it's amplifying the movements of your shoulder muscles. If I've done it right, you should be able to bend and extend your arm, move your wrist and flex a couple of your fingers."

Kurogane walked through the gestures with his right arm as she was talking. When he moved his wrist, Sari shook her head and flexed her hand up and down in the same direction that the throttle moved. It would be good enough.

The case rattled when it hit the ground, and Sari flipped the top open, running her hands over the outside of it with all the pride of a master craftsman finishing something against a deadline. Her lips curled up at every dent and bit of scratched metal.

"Looks good."

Sari made one last face and hefted the prosthetic into her arms. "It'll do." She pointed a finger at the row of benches set out for riders to sit on before the race. "Sit."

Even as he moved over towards it, a deep rumbling emerged from the dividing wall between the main and practice track. Mika idled his bike up the slight incline, followed by Fai and Syaoran.

"Why did Mika bring his bike?"

"Yours was more damaged in the crash than we initially thought. We couldn't get it fixed in time. Don't worry!" She insisted when Kurogane made a face. " _If_ something happens, Mika will have a field day putting it back together. Believe me."

"You could have lent me one of his older bikes."

"And risk Yaro winning because you just didn't have enough umph? I don't think so." She pushed Kurogane to the side and balanced the base of the prosthetic against his shoulder. She wedged the hand against her stomach to hold it tight against his skin. "Try moving it."

He obliged. The fingers moved hesitantly, scratching against Sari's leather apron. The wrist was even more jittery. He waited for Sari to adjust the placement, but her attention was on the group surrounding Mika's bike. "I don't think it's quite right."

The edges of the base hadn't lined up with Kurogane's shoulder perfectly, but that was unsurprising given the rush. Sari put the heel of her hand against the armpit and pushed, twisting the wrist as she went. She kept looking at Fai out of the corner of her eye.

"You're worried about him." He could have made it a question, but the prosthetic twisting sharply and melding to the uneven surface of his shoulder cut off the last word. He stared down at it in surprise and tentatively flexed his shoulder muscles. The appendage responded in a remarkably natural way. "Huh."

"He couldn't have said more than two words last night, and he's been so talkative up until now." Sari dug a marker from the front pocket of her tool belt and drew a thick line across the front of the prosthetic and onto his skin. Then she pushed Kurogane's head to the side, forcing him to look at the dirt, and marked the top of his shoulder and the back.

Fai not talking was never a good sign. It usually meant that Fai was _thinking_ , and prolonged periods of thought almost always guaranteed that Fai was going to come to a solution to a problem that was harmless to everyone except for himself.

A foreboding trickle crawled up the back of his spine. Kurogane was not prophetic, not in the way Tomoyo had been, but you couldn't become an excellent fighter without developing some sort of sixth sense. When it came to Fai, Kurogane was very well attuned to the prickling hints that something was about to happen.

When it came to Fai, _something_ happening almost invariably meant that something bad was going to happen.

"I can attach the straps, if you want."

Sari nodded, still using her body to brace the arm. "Just buckle the main two, and then he can stand up."

Fai reached around Kurogane to loosely do up the chest and neck straps before helping Kurogane to his feet.

After a brief look at the prosthetic, Sari nudged the top of the case closed with her foot and jogged across the soft dirt to her husband and his bike.

The silence stretched almost uncomfortably long. Kurogane studied Fai's face, trying to read his plan from that expressionless mask. He raised his arm to allow Fai to adjust the straps around his chest.

Fingers smoothed the straps down, adjusting metal fastenings and buckled leather until it sat without pinching Kurogane's skin. Even after the arm was properly adjusted, Fai's hands lingered. One pressed against the main strap that bisected his chest, and the other rested on the metal swell of his bicep.

Kurogane instantly missed the Piffle prosthetic. He would have been able to feel Fai's touch if he still had the high-tech machine. He might have even been able to pick up something in the almost unconscious flicker of fingers.

"Last chance, Kurogane."

They both jumped. Neither of them had heard the approach of the bike, but both turned to stare at Yaro.

He'd parked his bike a few feet away and swung off it, leaning on the saddle with an irritated expression on his face. He clearly hadn't expected Kurogane to have either a bike or an arm. "Do you accept the challenge?"

Fai was gnawing on his lip and had turned back to stare fixedly at the straps. "Here's your chance to get rid of me, Kuro-myu." When the last word passed his lips, the blue eyes snapped up to stare at Yaro again.

Kurogane recognized that tone. It was the tone that Fai always used when he was being painfully cautious in choosing his words. That tone made Kurogane listen especially carefully, and he heard what he was supposed to. This was not a question of his protection - that had never and would never be questioned - but rather of his desire to remain _together_ with Fai. "Idiot. Hasn't that chance passed several times? You can't leave me that easily." Kurogane pinned Yaro with his gaze, brows drawing down the minute Yaro's eyes rose to meet his. Every possessive ounce of him begged to be released, and Kurogane was more than happy to oblige. He smirked when Yaro quelled slightly under his glare. "Say what you really want for once."

Out of the corner of his eye, Kurogane saw Fai's hand clench unconsciously on the metal casing of his arm. Again, he wished for his old prosthetic; he just wanted to feel...

Fai's magic?

Electricity climbed up his skin, lighting the sliver of air between himself and Fai. He knew this feeling. The hairs on his arm stood on end and his heartbeat quickened to match the inherent pulse in Fai's magic.

He was going to knock him out. He was going to destroy Mika's bike. He was going to sabotage the arm, or the straps, or any handful of other things that would stop the race and spare Kurogane any pain save for the raw agony of surrendering Fai to this bastard. Even though Fai had asked carefully, even though Kurogane had answered with even more care, Fai was going to insist on his ridiculous version of self-sacrifice. The thoughts tumbled over each other in Kurogane's mind as he leapt from one plausible explanation to another for Fai ramping up his magic.

A dim corner of his mind noticed Fai's hand lift off his arm, one finger extended to inscribe a single complicated sigil in the air.

Yaro's bike disintegrated.

To be more specific, it exploded outwards, each part pulling away from the others until all of Yaro's bike hung in the air with little more than a centimeter of air separating each gear, each bolt, and each hammered piece of metal. Then the magic ended, and the parts crashed to the ground in a massive heap. One gear pinged off the solid upper casing of the bike and bounced into the dirt by Yaro's feet.

"What did you do?" A note of awe filled Sari's voice.

Fai looked slightly sheepish, as if the spell was one that he knew but was usually only used by only thirteen-year-olds with nothing better to do than to prank their neighbors. "I returned it to its original parts."

"You son of a...!"

Yaro's rush was fast, but not fast enough, Fai ducked under a fist thrown wild in anger and smashed the heel of his hand into Yaro's throat, collapsing his trachea and choking off the end of that curse. After he struck, his cupped palm under Yaro's chin was the only thing holding the limp body up. Contact lasted only a couple of seconds before he jerked his hand back.

Without the support, Yaro dropped bonelessly to the dirt at Fai's feet, gripping his throat and trying to draw in fragmented breaths.

"I am not yours. I will _never_ be yours." Fai's fingers traced the edge of one of his beads.

_I belong to someone else._

The words weren't spoken. They didn't need to be.

* * *

 

"Did you see the look on his face?" Sari hooted and practically skipped over the threshold into her house. "Serves him right!"

"That it does." Mika grinned brightly. "I've never seen quite such a surprised expression on anyone's face."

Sari shoved the prosthetic case into a narrow opening behind the door before pushing Syaoran and Mokona in front of her. "I think a celebration is in order!"

"Alcohol?" Mokona asked, hopefully.

"I believe we can arrange that."

The long walk back had been full of similar discussions. Sari had spent almost the entire time laughing at Yaro, and Kurogane couldn't really blame her. He'd been as astonished as Yaro at Fai's actions, although he suspected that he was slightly more pleased with them.

At least he was pleased after Mika had reassured him that Fai's actions didn't violate the challenge. Whether Fai had known or whether it had been a happy coincidence was unimportant - Yaro could not race without a bike, and he wasn't going to be moving quickly any time soon. The attack had left him with a painful sounding rattle in his throat.

The long hallway that twisted through their house crossed the stairs before it reached the kitchen. With the rest of the group leading the way, Fai and Kurogane were left at the back. Kurogane caught Fai's elbow and tugged him towards the stairs.

Fai stumbled along behind him. "Eh, Kuro-tan? The others are celebrating downstairs."

Kurogane pulled Fai into the room despite his protests and kicked the door shut behind them with an idle foot. He caught Fai's shoulders and pinned them to the wall next to the door.

"Kuro?"

"No more." He watched the color drain from Fai's face and bit out a curse. "Damn it mage, why are you so determined to misunderstand me? No more running. No more confusion. No more doubt."

He waited for Fai to lift his chin, waited for Fai to look up at him, waited until he was completely disarmed and distracted by whatever he was about to say, and then pressed his lips to Fai's. The kiss was soft and gentle, but definitely not chaste.

No more doubt.

Fai's fingers skittered over the raised ridges of scar tissue that marked his back, the touch flicking away almost before it had even occurred, as if Fai was afraid that real contact would break the moment. Kurogane growled and pushed him against the wall. Every inch of their bodies contacted flush, but Kurogane leaned even harder, not willing to give Fai any course of escape.

A shuddering moan escaped Fai's lips even as his hands caught and held Kurogane's shoulders.

To hell with the bed that stood only feet away, Kurogane had waited long enough; he was not going to waste another second. He tugged at Fai's shirt wanting, needing.... Ah, there it was. His hand spread across the narrow expansion of Fai's stomach. The skin trembled under his touch.

Every nerve in his body was screaming at him to bring this to a frenetic close of ripped clothing, sweat and satisfaction, but only one thought filled his mind. _It's about damn time._

* * *

 

"Here you go." Sari handed the bottle of wine over to Mokona. A brief discussion about the possibility of Mokona managing a wine glass had ended in Sari and Mika pouring themselves generous glasses and surrendering the rest to Mokona. Sari waited for it to wrestle the bottle around into a drinking position and then raised her glass. "To a good day. Cheers!"

Syaoran looked around. "Cheers? Shouldn't we wait for Kurogane-san and Fai-san?"

While pointedly not looking at the ceiling, Sari took a long swallow from her wine. "I'm sure they'll be down later."

Mika smirked knowingly into his drink.

* * *

It was nearly a week before they moved on. Kurogane was infinitely grateful that Fai hadn't spent that time in Yaro's company. Any society, no matter what, took a dim view of dismemberment, and he was sure Fai would have defended himself. He'd rather not have spent the time trying to break Fai out of jail.

When Mokona started getting antsy, Fai had tried to pay Sari back for the labor and parts that she'd given them.

She'd simply held up an insulated box that was packed full of heating tokens and had shook her head. "More than repaid." She'd finished the first proper prototype of her new arm scarce hours before they left and had tried it out on Kurogane. The results were remarkable, and she'd clutched the arm to her chest, grinning like a mad woman.

Mika had rolled his eyes at his wife exuberance. "She'll have more work than she knows what to do with, you know."

She had hugged the arm just as tightly when Mokona's wings exploded outwards, filling the vaulted ceiling of her workshop. Her lips parted and might have formed the word, 'unbelievable.'

Fai's hand on his arm was all the hint he needed. Kurogane grabbed the back of Syaoran's cloak and braced himself for Fai's magic to wash over him. He felt the familiar tug of Mokona's teleportation tinted with a dancing spark across the back of his eyes. Just before the world vanished, he saw Sari and Mika raise their hands and wave goodbye.

Mika may have shouted, "Don't wear him out!" at the last moment, but Kurogane couldn't be sure.

Tomoyo had raised an eyebrow at the two of them when they arrived in Piffle but had not asked for an explanation of either Kurogane's arm or Fai's new look. She had, however, taken the arm completely apart and had spent several days pouring over its inner workings.

Had they stayed for another couple of days on Piffle, Tomoyo would have been able to skin it. When she'd asked if it was all right, Fai had nodded and touched Kurogane's arm with a slight smile playing around his lips. Kurogane had to agree - with skin it would be nothing more than another strong limb. The goal was not to torture Fai with his sacrifice, but rather to always remind him of what he was willing to do in order to keep Fai at his side.

Time had passed, as it was want to do. Fai's dreads grew out, and the world that they had never gotten around to naming - though both Syaoran and Fai rather affectionately referred to it as 'Mika and Sari's place' - was replaced by a myriad of other worlds with other strange customs and other entertaining people.

When his dreads were little more than matted ends and his hair was getting too long to be manageable, Fai cut them off.

That night, Kurogane stretched out his arm to brush back the loose strands of hair off of Fai's sleeping face. He should have missed the symbolism of the dreads, but somehow he didn't.

Bright moonlight glinted off the mix of crimson and blue beads strung around Fai's neck.


End file.
